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Attention: This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.

Request concerning LessHeard vanU

User requesting enforcement

William M. Connolley (talk) 21:31, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

User against whom enforcement is requested

LessHeard vanU (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Sanction or remedy that this user violated

Basic tenets of noninvolvement of Misplaced Pages:General sanctions/Climate change probation

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

1. , . These two, taken together, show LHVU reverting the page to his, and by "co-incidence" Cla68's, favoured version. This is not permissible.

Diffs of notifications or of prior warnings against the conduct objected to (if required)

1. None

Enforcement action requested (block, topic ban or other sanction)

LHVU to step away from admin action over the Cl Ch sanctions for one of the usual periods, perhaps a month or two.

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

Me asking LHVU to either withdraw the prot or the revert is at User_talk:LessHeard_vanU#Blog_again, as is his refusal

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Discussion concerning LessHeard vanU

Statement by LessHeard vanU

I have already requested review and comments at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Review of actions, and noted the same on this pages talkpage and - after getting a little lost with the redirected talkpage - the article talkpage. Since this is an Climate Change Probation related article, I think this request is valid - but the input on the ANI page needs taken into account also in participants consideration. Plus, there is discussion at User talk:LessHeard vanU#Blog again that bears review. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:53, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Re action requested; I fail to see why an issue in respect of one article that I am trying to admin unilaterally (per my understanding of both the admins remit and the Climate Change Probation allowances for admin supervision) should, if I were found to have exceeded my duties, extend to disbarring me from CCPe generally - unless it is found I acted so egregiously as to place my sysop status at risk. My actions generally within the CC Probation area are not being examined (yet) so I don't see why there might be good reason consider restrictions in that space. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:06, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

• Casting an eye over the proposed wording of a close, and some of the earlier comments, I would note that there is an aspect of the move to merge the article that I had forgotten to mention. The article had previously been put to an AfD with arguments to either delete or merge; the article was closed as no consensus. My understanding is that editors who had participated in the AfD discussion(edit comment - not all editors had been involved in the earlier AfD, so striking. LessHeard vanU (talk) 11:57, 17 May 2010 (UTC)) are not permitted to subsequently decide the closing admin was wrong, that they think it should be merged, and that they have consensus to do so. Another formal gathering of opinion, such as a RfC, is needed to establish whether the finding of the AfD should be put aside. That is my opinion of how process works in such matters. Therefore I submit that I was correct in undoing redirects to merge, since there could not be consensus without another form of consensus gathering, and it was appropriate to protect the article from being redirected out of process. I apologise for not bringing up this rationale for my actions earlier on this page, although I had clarified them previously at other venues. LessHeard vanU (talk) 11:42, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Wrong. An AfD is only really a reflection on whether an article should be deleted or not. A no consensus is exactly that, no consensus to delete or keep. The merge discussion is not in any way invalidated by a no consensus at AfD. I came to adminship through my knowledge of AfD. This appears like a desperate attempt to justify your actions. Polargeo (talk) 11:52, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

• • Look, I don't mean to be rude or anything, but you are completely wrong. Ask an experienced AFD closer if an article that was closed as "no consensus" can be subsequently merged without a "formal gathering of opinion." Any of them. Hipocrite (talk) 11:49, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
    • As noted, that was/is my understanding - the AfD did not provide a consensus (which is based on policy). Forming a new consensus should not be a matter of those who desire the merge agreeing that policy supports them, you need to establish it - and with editors disagreeing there was no consensus. So, SV creating an RfC was appropriate and making the merge on the basis that some advocates believed they had found consensus is faulty. If the merge had consensus it would not have previously been recently reverted. There was no consensus, and a RfC seeking to establish it should not have been pre-empted. LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:07, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

So we are back to the beginning. An RfC (informal request for outside comment) was started by SV after a fairly clear merge consensus had already emerged. You tried to enforce a block on the consensus and cited the Rfc (informal procedure) and used your admin tools which was wrong. Polargeo (talk) 12:13, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

You then suggested that these were not against me (even though they blatantly were) even though I had never had any sort of previous warning. Lar then forces me to apologise because of wheel warring. I would very much appreciate it if you would absolve me from that. I am not an edit warrior, whatever else I may be. Polargeo (talk) 12:21, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

There was not a consensus. ChrisO had redirected the article on 5th May, which Cla68 reverted as not having consensus, and for which both were blocked along with Dave souza, all for taking actions where there was no apparent agreement on the talkpage - yet you say that there was consensus forming over that period, and that SV's rfc, after she also had raised concerns whether there was an established consensus, was a late effort to derail what you indicate was an established fact. I would have to ask what you thought Mark nutley and Cla68 (and others) were objecting to when they were at the same time attempting to provide reliable sources that gave the subject evidence of its own notability. Did they concede that the article should be merged, because their actions seemed to indicate otherwise? To respond to your last point, you are certainly no edit warrior and you hold yourself strongly to your understanding of policy and practice - I absolve you of any need to apologise to me for being topic banned, that was my decision solely - but I am not sure that in the area of AGW/CC that you are able to balance your understanding of the truth with the need for WP to be neutral in its reporting of the issues. I am pretty certain that is exactly the issue you find with me, since you are convinced that I persuaded by a different truth than the one you hold - and I have made my comments upon that point and will not repeat them again. I did not see a consensus, I saw a slow edit war and my actions were to enforce the formation of a consensus that was apparent to all. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:13, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Point of information! "Lar then forces me to apologise" is false. I suggested that you needed to say you were wrong. You then freely chose to do so. That is diffferent than forcing an apology. Forced apologies are worth nothing... but more importantly, how exactly was I going to "force" you to do anything? Really, I think you need to stop playing so fast and loose with the facts, Polargeo. ++Lar: t/c 13:34, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments by others about the request concerning LessHeard vanU

Comment by SlimVirgin

LHvU is acting as an uninvolved admin here, trying to get everyone to abide by the content policies and best practice, and so far as I can tell he is doing it without fear or favour.

In the latest incident, William Connolley and Polargeo were trying to pre-empt the results of an RfC posted a few days ago. The RfC asked for fresh input to decide whether Bishop Hill (blog) (a climate-scepticism blog) should be merged into Andrew Montford (the person who runs the blog), or vice versa—or neither. Comments are still arriving, but WMC and Polargeo decided the RfC wasn't necessary and they've twice in the last 24 hours or so made the merge of their choice. LHvU reverted their latest effort, protected the page, and has asked that the RfC be allowed to run its course. If any action needs to be taken it's against the editors trying to close the RfC prematurely. SlimVirgin 22:21, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments by Fell Gleaming

It looks like LHVD stopped an edit war, reverted out a page blanking that a user performed without consensus while a merger discussion was still ongoing, then protected the page. I don't see a problem? You're seriously asking for a ban for doing good work like this?

Also, it appears WMC voted for this article to be deleted then, when that failed, voted for a merge and then attempted improperly to merge it while discussion was still ongoing. It appears he's simply upset over the outcome here. Fell Gleaming 21:51, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Its 13-3 in favour of merge. So unless your definition of consensus is "decision I agree with" you're simply wrong William M. Connolley (talk) 21:49, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

It appears the "straw poll" vote section started all of four days ago? And you're already trying to close it out, to the point of starting an edit war over it? And you're surprised an admin stepped in to halt the shenanigans?

Also, I count at least 5 people against merging this article into the biography. I also don't see 13 people voting for it to happen, unless their comments are outside the actual "straw poll" section. However, that all is moot. Trying to close out a merge discussion after just four days is a clear violation of policy. Fell Gleaming 22:21, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

The RfC currently stands at 10 in favour of the proposed merge, and six against. Of the six, three favour a merge in the other direction, and three want no merge at all. That's why it needs to be allowed to continue. SlimVirgin 23:14, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Also, as I'm sure WMC knows, the process is about more than counting noses. It's about the most compelling argument. Even a cursory look at the situation sees that this article is more notable than the one they're trying to merge it into...and the people voting to merge it are mostly those who recently attempted to delete it. It seems clear this is an attempt to bury information the editors find unfavorable to their views. Fell Gleaming 23:39, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

The merge argument had been made ad nauseum over several talkpage sections including on the article where the merge was requested to. Nobody is counting noses. The RfC can run and run but it has no power to prevent edits or stop a merge that has consensus. We are never going to get 100 % consensus on this (now there is a shock) but I think from all arguments to date it is a clear merge to Montford. Now if you wish for all of those previous discussions to be cut and pasted into the RfC to show this is about more than just votes then I will do that. Polargeo (talk) 09:50, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments by Ratel

Can we please have some rotation on the admins who oversee this area? Currently, we have at least 2 admins here who have quite strong feelings about the content. I infer this from their actions, although I'm sure they'll claim otherwise. Isn't there some way we can roster on other admins? Uninvolved, —I mean truly uninvolved— admins are sorely needed. My previous call for climate expert admins was derided as unworkable, so this would be the next best thing. ► RATEL ◄ 00:04, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

You'd need to provide evidence of LhvU having strong feelings (or any feelings) on the content issue. I've only been involved in this for a few days, but I see an admin doing his best to uphold the policies and best practice, and let the chips fall where they may. SlimVirgin 01:01, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

As are we all but I would relish a break from this somewhat thankless task and if we can find some more admins to play a rota is a good plan. --BozMo talk 12:06, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by ZP5*

This admin rightfully blocked WMC on March 2nd and April 2nd. As one of the few willing to stand up to WMC. By the other comments here, I am suspicious of WMC's motives. I've seen past cases were WMC rakes admins who make him realize the pain his caustic approach causes others. This request may be bordering on an abuse of this page, for which if WMC's past requests are examined closer, a recurring pattern may be seen. , , . This admin has also closed many of WMC's meandering complains here. Outside admins should review the complainer's evasive history and unwarranted RFEs in this project when considering the issue raised. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 04:10, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Polargeo

Give LessHeard a break. He thinks he was doing the right thing. Although he appears to be as misguided as Lar and Cla are on this. If he will undo his actions then that is fine end of story. As for banning me from editing Bishop Hill after I made a single edit which followed consensus, I just feel a little sorry for him. The only thing I give a fuck about is making sure wikipedia follows consensus. If he is now banning me when I have never even been warned, never edit warred etc. etc. it just shows how much he has lost the plot. Polargeo (talk) 09:00, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh and my action was a simple edit, a single edit to merge the article which attempted to enforce a consensus which had existed before someone stuck an RfC note above everyone's talkpage comments. I didn't close the RfC. I would not do that, did I merge the talkpage? No. If the RfC came to a different conclusion I would have been behind it all the way, yes of course.

Please note Requests for comment (RfC) is an informal, lightweight process for requesting outside input it is not an excuse to prevent edits merges etc. etc. etc. and LHvU is using it to do this completely against policy. He is using his admin tools against policy. Polargeo (talk) 09:10, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Polargeo is just being a transparent meat puppet for Connolley. His opinion should not be counted separately from Willie's. LHvU is doing a good job. --204.11.245.200 (talk) 18:11, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Sockery. Plus not true. ++Lar: t/c 20:46, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I think LHvU is doing a great job too Polargeo (talk) 21:57, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Other comments

According to the regulation RfCs usually end after 30 days. The reg states that the nominator can close it earlier. WMC is not the nominator of this RfC. WMC used to be an admin and should know better. There probably should be an enforcement action against WMC. Cla68 (talk) 22:14, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Make my day. But you are deliberately obscuring the point: LHVU is entirely welcome to revert the page - or protect it - but not both William M. Connolley (talk) 22:17, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

WMC, did you violate the RfC rules by closing an RfC and taking action before 30 days in which you were not the nominator? Cla68 (talk) 22:20, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Pretty straight forward misuse of admin tools. You don't revert and then protect except in extreme cases like major BLP violations. Guettarda (talk) 22:20, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

It's standard practice to revert and protect when there's been an abuse of process. It's clearly inappropriate for two involved editors with strong views to close or ignore an RfC that someone else posted just a few days earlier, and while comments are still arriving. The whole point of an RfC is to ask for fresh input, which can take time to arrive. SlimVirgin 22:26, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Per below but to allow response here: starting an RFC has just as much potential for gaming and being an abuse of process as closing one. RFCs do not give a divine right to a sufficient number of editors to Filibuster. In this case the RFC was marginal, the going ahead on some consensus against an open RFC was marginal, doing a revert and protect in these circumstances was marginal. Very hard to call any of them as definitively in or out. And opinion here and on AN/I is divided on each of these three aspects. --BozMo talk 10:42, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Except that even when taking into account the RfC there appears to be a merge consensus. If there had not been I would not have made the edits. However, the RfC should not override conensus. Particularly when it was introduced when the argument against merge was lost and when the RfC to the point of making my edits only appeared to enforce the consensus that already existed. I cannot comprehend how this could be used to stagnate the article via LessHeard's admin tools. Polargeo (talk) 10:50, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

What's the hurry? Since WMC tried to prematurely close the RfC and during the time that you tried to do so, the RfC has received nine additional votes. Of those, four were for the merge and five against, considerably narrowing the "consensus". I would say, just based on that, that this RfC definitely needs to run its full course. Again, what's the hurry? Cla68 (talk) 11:56, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I did not try to close the RfC. I would not try to close the RfC. What WMC does is his own issue, I am not a backer of WMC only of consensus. Starting an RfC is not a carte blanche to keep an article in stagnation for a month even if LHvU seems to think it is. Polargeo (talk) 12:12, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I am missing something here. The linked RFC above seems to stand at 15 merge and 4 don't merge. So presumably I am looking in the wrong place for these 5 recent don't merge votes? Link please --BozMo talk 12:05, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

(EC) @Guettarda: Not true. "Since protecting the most current version sometimes rewards edit warring by establishing a contentious revision, administrators may also revert to an old version of the page predating the edit war if such a clear point exists." Arkon (talk) 22:27, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Two wrongs don't make a right. You either act as an admin or an editor. You can't revert and protect. Not over something as trivial as this. Guettarda (talk) 22:29, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Read my quote, it contradicts your statement directly. Arkon (talk) 22:33, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

No more than IAR contradicts any policy. LHvU is clearly involved in this article - he protected the article for "edit warring" when there was no edit war ongoing. He one editor after a single edit, with no warning. And he advocated in favour of SV's stalling tactics. He did everything he could to prevent the merge, despite consensus. Then he reverted to his preferred version and protected the page. LHvU was one of the edit warriors here. Guettarda (talk) 03:00, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

And "abuse of process"? Seriously? You've never read WP:BURO? Guettarda (talk) 22:30, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Any enforcement involving WMC. Even one requested by WMC, wouldn't be right without Lar popping up as an uninvolved admin and requesting major sanctions against WMC. Sadly very predictable Polargeo (talk) 19:46, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

What is the cutoff for major? Is 9 trouts minor and 10 major then? Or is just one trout major and you'd only accept a minnow as minor? You're being ridiculous. Sadly very predictable. ++Lar: t/c 20:45, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Lar I thought there was an RfC running about you not acting as an uninvolved admin in cases connected to WMC. Going by LHvU's novel interpretation of RfC you should stay well clear for 30 days or LHvU will use his tools on you. Polargeo (talk) 05:34, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh and which part of your statement Alternatively, some sort of sanction against WMC for mucking around could be proposed., is about just trouts? It would be funny if you hadn't already shown that you want WMC topic banned for a year. The fact that you even use the opportunity of WMC bringing a legitimate complaint to call for sanctions against him is really very sad. Polargeo (talk) 05:51, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

What Lar wants is for climate change articles to cease being a war zone, and his suggestion to ban WMC is pursuant to that goal. When you say stuff like Lar "want(s) WMC topic banned", that's a very bad faith assumption because it implies Lar is acting on some interpersonal motive, rather than for the good of the project. That needs to stop. There is no indication that Lar has any ulterior motive in wanting WMC banned, other than he believes that WMC's actions are disruptive enough to warrant a long term ban -- and in fact, unlike your assumptions about Lar's motivations, WMC's disruptive actions are quite well documented (see, for example, his long list of enforcement requests). ATren (talk) 06:57, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Maybe what Lar wants are several editors like yourself to follow him about and win his arguments for him. Several of the diffs at the RfC do show Lar encourages this sort of behaviour. Polargeo (talk) 14:30, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Macai (talk) 02:15, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments by me

Shouldn't this request be viewed as disruptive since Willie obviously knew that it was already being discussed here? Persistent abuse of the community's time like this is deserves a reasonably long block since Willie obviously knows this already. --204.11.245.201 (talk) 18:21, 12 May 2010 (UTC)</ obvious sock of 204.11.245.200 in any case --BozMo talk 19:10, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Request concerning William M. Connolley

User requesting enforcement

SlimVirgin 20:10, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

User against whom enforcement is requested

William M. Connolley (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Sanction or remedy that this user violated

Misplaced Pages:General sanctions/Climate change probation

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

{{{Diffs of edits that violate it, and an explanation how they do so}}}

• - WMC edited the article to say that Singer is a global warming skeptic
• - WMC added (restored?) a POV tag

This section needs to be expanded if this request is not to be declined without further action. As per the rules, it needs an explanation how these (or other yet to be added) diffs constitute "disruptive edits, including, but not limited to, edit warring, personal attacks, incivility and assumptions of bad faith". Ben Aveling 06:50, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Diffs of notifications or of prior warnings against the conduct objected to (if required)

{{{Diffs of prior warnings}}}

Enforcement action requested (block, topic ban or other sanction)

That he be topic banned from editing Fred Singer

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

Would one of the admins who oversee the climate change probation please topic-ban William M. Connolley from editing Fred Singer? Singer is a very distinguished American physicist, 85 years old. He argues that there's no evidence that the increase in carbon dioxide produced by human beings causes global warming. As such he has become a target of WMC, who has been editing his article very poorly for years. WMC has made the most edits (103 since 2004), followed by me (101 since a few days ago), and then KimDabelsteinPetersen (98 since 2006).

Singer complained about the poor editing of the article in The American Thinker in February 2010, writing "In my own case, my Wiki bio also carried additional malicious accusations; the most bizarre one was that I believed in the existence of Martians." Canadian writer Lawrence Solomon has written about Connolley's editing of Singer's bio several times, alleging that WMC was trying to smear Singer—in The National Post in April 2008, again in May 2008 and in the National Review in July 2008.

I recently found the article in very poor shape. Singer has had a long and very varied career, yet a great deal of it isn't even mentioned in the article, so I've been working since May 13 to try to fix it. This was how I found it; this is how I left it before Connolley arrived again today.

WMC now wants the article to say that Singer is a global warming skeptic before we even say he is a physicist. When I reverted and left a note on talk, he added the POV tag and six citation-needed tags to the lead, all for material that is already sourced after the paragraph, and which he anyway knows is correct. He also removed material that was sourced to The New York Times. If a new editor had done this, we'd have little hesitation in calling it vandalism.

Bear in mind that this is a BLP; that WMC has been criticized in the mainstream press for his editing of it; and that the article is under climate change probation. And yet still he behaves this way. I find that very arrogant and aggressive, and I don't think it's fair to the subject of the bio that an editor with that attitude is allowed to have anything to do with the page after so many complaints about it. SlimVirgin 20:10, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

In case admins are willing to consider topic banning WMC from all climate-change BLPs, please consider this sequence of events.

WMC and some others were engaged for a long time in shoddy editing of Fred Singer. Lawrence Solomon, a fairly well-known Canadian writer, first pointed this out in two articles in The National Post, one of Canada's two national newspapers, in April and May 2008; the second article names Connolley. In the first one Solomon wrote:

The page that Misplaced Pages devotes to what is ostensibly Fred Singer’s biography is designed to trivialize his long and outstanding scientific career ... Honest accounts of Fred Singer and his accomplishments have been available on Misplaced Pages, and on hundreds of occasions. Those occasions don’t last long, however — often just minutes — before the honest accounts are discovered and reverted by Wikipedians who troll the site.

Solomon's BLP then became a target too. WMC's first edit to Lawrence Solomon was in June 2008. And there WMC engaged in exactly the same editing as he engaged in today at Fred Singer—moving into the first sentence that Solomon is best known as a denier of global warming, and adding several citation-needed tags to the lead. Here for comparison's sake are WMC's edits today to Singer's article.

It's worth pointing out that Solomon's criticism of WMC has not been allowed to appear in William Connolley's biography (which has no secondary source material showing why he might be notable), where WMC's wikifriends have made sure it stays out on BLP grounds. Would that they were so considerate of others. SlimVirgin 01:07, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Your implied statement that User:Reddi, User:ChildofMidnight, User:Nsaa, and User:UBeR are "wikifriends" of WMC is puzzling. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:19, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

diff

I don't see that SlimVirgin says anything like that (and my edits on this page is mainly technical like fixing references and so on), but "It's worth pointing out that Solomon's criticism of WMC has not been allowed to appear in William Connolley's biography". And I'm not a friend of him, but iff I go to Britain we can off course go out and drink a beer :-). If you have differences nothing is better :-). Looking at the history is quit interesting removes blog, Vsmith removes a sourced paragraph, Atmoz removes blog (ok), Removed a fact, but the sourcing is questionable, spectator.org removed as source etc. Nsaa (talk) 12:54, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Reply to 2/0

I did go to the talk page, but when I saw WMC add six citation tags to the lead for Singer's career description—which was sourced and has been in the article for a long time—I felt he was playing games, and I have no desire to get involved in it. He baits, he insults, he harries, he feigns surprise, he tries to make people look and feel foolish. It's not honest debate and there's just no point in it. This is a BLP issue that's been going on for years. It needs to be sorted out, and I can't do that alone, so I came here. SlimVirgin 02:52, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Problem continues

Even as this is being discussed, WMC continues with the same kind of editing at Fred Singer. SlimVirgin 21:08, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

A request

For the admins looking at this, a decision fairly soon would be appreciated. WMC has now taken to, in effect, vandalizing the article by removing the entire further reading section and the categories. He posted on talk that the articles in FR looked like spam. But they were just regular articles from the NYT, Guardian etc, some by Singer, some about him.

This was shortly after he removed material in the lead from The New York Times that he think is "rubbish," added his own unsourced opinion to the lead about Singer's early research, and accused me of "writing lies" in edit summaries.

There's no point in trying to improve the article with this kind of thing going on. SlimVirgin 07:54, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

To avoid splintering this over 20 articles, see Talk:Fred_Singer#Stopping_for_now and Talk:Fred_Singer#Further_Reading. As for "no point" - is this an improvement or not? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:00, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

This really would be better discussed on the article talk page, instead of spewing allegations of vandalism.

For the further reading, there is even section for it Talk:Fred_Singer#Further_Reading - SV could join in instead of throwing her toys out of the pram. The objection, as given there, is that the FR section was vast, and apparently pointless, and SV appeared to be using it as a workspace.

As to the NYT: yes, it is rubbish. We don't have to add junk to articles merely because someone says it. I've already covoered this in my statement, above: He also removed material that was sourced to The New York Times. Indeed I did. Here is the diff . I removed what looked like hyperbole to me. Shall we google it to see if it is true? . 1,120 hits, looks good doesn't it? But actually there seem to be only 11, and they are *all* reprints of the NYT article. Which is to say that *no-one* calls him the DoCC, except Revkin, once. Is SV not bothering to read any of this stuff?

Lies in edit summaries? Most certainly: SV persistently reverts under deceptive edit summaries, for example

William M. Connolley (talk) 10:14, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

The rule is WP:V and not WP:IKNOWWHATSTRUE. The NYT is generally RS per the founding policies of WP, and calling it "rubbish" does not help any discussion. Collect (talk) 10:44, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Even usually reliable sources make errors. We are in no way obligated to repeat them, especially in such a irrelevant matter. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:49, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

@C: so you really are arguing that we should not only insert a known false statement into a BLP, but that removing that false statement should be a sanctionable offence? If so, you are lost. Policy should not get in the way of sanity. But, if you are interested in this issue, why not discuss it in the correct place: Talk:Fred_Singer#Dean_of... William M. Connolley (talk) 10:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Read WP:V It is not up tp edotprs tp use "truth" as a rationale for rejecting what a RS says. Nor is suggesting the NYT is somehow insane going to help much. Ever.

The threshold for inclusion in Misplaced Pages is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Misplaced Pages has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.

Seems quite clear as WP policy. Not "If WMC knows something then it is usable, and if he knows it is false it may not be used." Collect (talk) 11:35, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

That specifies a lower threshold. We do not include everything that can be reliably sourced - that's editorial discretion. And including something, if printed in a RS or not, that is verifiably false harms the encyclopedia. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:54, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

"Or if Stephan Schulz knows something is wrong then it can not be used" is also not in any WP policy I found. See also WP:NPOV wherein it states that the solution for disagreeing with a claim is to add claims from other RSs. It does not say "If something is false according to an editor, it can not be in the article." This is, indeed, a core policy of WP. WP:Josh Billings Collect (talk) 17:15, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Discussion concerning William M. Connolley

Statement by William M. Connolley

This is the state of the FS talk page when SV filed this request. Notice how little attempt SV has made to discuss these problems. Notice the attempt by me to discuss the issues. This request is premature and should be dismissed as such.

But the usual suspects won't, so let us look at SV's complaints.

The main one appears to be that I edited the article to say that Singer is a global warming skeptic before we even say he is a physicist. To anyone at all familiar with FS, this is a very odd complaint indeed. Indeed, SEPP's own tagline is Founded by atmospheric physicist and global-warming skeptic S. Fred Singer; press releases, news articles, scientific studies and other materials available. - so even Singer admits that AP and GWS belong on the first line, and all we disagree about is the order of terms. SV insists that even mentionning GWS is bad. Does anyone really think that Singer is better know for his atmospheric physics? Try looking at what-links-to-Singer and see what wiki uses him for.

SV notes that this is a BLP, yet she has added a large number of claims that are sourced to nothing but Singer's self-publsihed biog. These are all dubious; they may well be correct, but who knows. SV asserts that which he anyway knows is correct - I'm sorry, but mid-reading is not a RS, and in this case SV's mind-reading is wrong, anyway. I don't know those things to be correct.

Let us take one of SV's claims: He was later the founding dean of the University of Miami's School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences. This appears to be sourced only so FS's selfpub bio . I'm very doubtful that is a good enough source, ince contested. I could be wrong of course - in which case, the correct course of action is a polite discussion on the article talk page, rather than "going nuclear" so quickly.

He also removed material that was sourced to The New York Times. Indeed I did. Here is the diff . I removed what looked like hyperbole to me. Shall we google it to see if it is true? . 1,120 hits, looks good doesn't it? But actually there seem to be only 11, and they are *all* reprints of the NYT article. Which is to say that *no-one* calls him the DoCC, except Revkin, once.

This looks to me like a clear case of SV fouling up this article with junk. I ask that *she* be topic banned for polluting a BLP with wrongness William M. Connolley (talk) 21:52, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and can someone revert the sock and maybe semi the page? William M. Connolley (talk) 22:03, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Done in the course of reviewing background to this RE. Proxycheck or CU might not go amiss. - 2/0 (cont.) 23:58, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I object to the assertion of "only partial defence". The indictment section contains 2 diffs:

• - WMC edited the article to say that Singer is a global warming skeptic
• - WMC added (restored?) a POV tag

Of those, the second is absurd - the assertion that adding a POV tag is sanctionable is manifest nonsense. The first is also absurd: the current version of the article, as protected by Bozmo, also includes this text, so it really can't be so terrible. The rest is just mud-flinging. And your consenus is what: you, Lar, LHVU? William M. Connolley (talk) 18:06, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments by others about the request concerning William M. Connolley

Sorry, but the claim that Solomon's column's represent "the mainstream press" already shows that this complaint has no basis in fact. This has been to WP:COIN when Solomon's misrepresentations (to be generous) were fresh, and no problem was found. Singer has, for the last 20 years, been best known for SEPP and his stance against the scientific consensus on global warming. This is a significant source of his notability, and it has to be covered adequately in the article. The way to achieve that is to work with, not against, knowledgeable editors. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:32, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

While The American Thinker is a blog, so not acceptable as a source, it is hardly a fringe site. One should never over-react to any criticism of Misplaced Pages in outside venues, but neither should it be dismissed simply because it isn't the NYT. Similarly, the National Review, while not the favorite reading of some, is a well-respected journal, and comments therein should not be cavalierly dismissed. The reputation of WP should be important to all of us, and it is my view that the state of climate change articles does not represent the best of WP by a long shot.--SPhilbrickT 21:56, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

When someone can show us the 8000 climate change articles that WMC edited, and the 200 editors (or whatever the number is) he blocked because of their edits to climate change pages, we might consider taking Solomon seriously. And arguing that saying Singer is better known as a physicist than a "skeptic" is ban-worthy is just plain silly. Singer is better known as a "skeptic". Guettarda (talk) 20:56, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Solomon wrote: "When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Misplaced Pages contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions." For what it may be worth, I notice that Solomon has edited Misplaced Pages and in April 2008 he complained about WMC. Cardamon (talk) 17:35, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Just to make it clear: What Solomon did was copying misleading numbers from the EditCounter without any understanding. 2000 (if even that number is correct) is the total number of all blocks WMCs ever imposed. Nearly all of them were standard short-term WP:3RR enforcement blocks following the then-standard policy (24 hours for a first violation). There are essentially no long-term blocks, and there are essentially no blocks related to climate change articles. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

You have a good point in that Solomon seems to not understand or exaggerate on some minor statements. Not many outside journalist understands Misplaced Pages well as have been shown over and over again. But his main point is seems to be extremely valid unhappily. Nsaa (talk) 12:36, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Solomon did not get anything factual right in that article except maybe the spelling. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

This is not about Solomon, it's about Singer and WMC. Two years ago I gave up on the Singer BLP because there was no room for debate with editors like WMC and Raul654, who insisted on emphasizing "embarrassing" (WMC's own words) claims that Singer believed in life on Mars (among other smear tactics). Raul has long since left this topic area, but WMC is still here fighting any efforts to fix Singer's bio. WMC's history on Singer's bio is there for all to examine, regardless of what Solomon says, and continued emphasis on Solomon distracts from the real issue here. WMC should be banned from Singer. In fact, WMC should be banned from all BLPs in this topic area because he's written extensively (and often derisively) about many of these people on his blog, and he seems incapable of putting aside his antipathy towards them in his activities here. Some recent examples: he recently fought to add the unqualified "Plimer is wrong" to Ian Plimer's BLP based on opinion pieces, even though others (including ChrisO ) argued for more encyclopedic wording and better sourcing; he also added an association with Lyndon LaRouche in a skeptic's BLP, sourced to his friend Tim Lambert's climate blog . I can find more if necessary. As SV says, these are the kinds of activities that get other editors banned, yet WMC gets away with it. ATren (talk) 22:55, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

• Looking over the article history for the last few months, I don't see any edits by WMC that stand out as obviously and blatantly improper. He obviously brings a certain point of view to BLPs in the climate change space, but he's hardly alone in that. There may be the appearance of a conflict of interest here, and WMC might consider voluntarily withdrawing from editing the article for the sake of appearances, but I don't believe anyone can point to any edit of the article and say "There, that one. That's where he demonstrates his conflict of interest." Thparkth (talk) 23:21, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I looked it up and I believe that ATren is referring to this edit where WMC moves a sentence about the Martian moon Phobos out of the Space and Exploration section into the lede, apparently because WMC thinks it's embarrassing to Singer. I don't think that should be a goal when writing a biography of a living person. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:36, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually that is a revert of someone else removing it - and WMC wasn't even the first to revert its removal from the lead. It looks like that text has been floating about in different positions in the article for a very long time. I can't find the edit that initially placed it in the lead, but FWIW it wasn't that one. Thparkth (talk) 11:34, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, he added it a total of five times. Two of them were reversions of Fred Bauder, who was an arbitrator at the time. One of them actually used the loaded words "built by Martians" which sounds ridiculous and was added to the lead. At around the same time, he was removing text about Singer being an advisor to president Eisenhower, a fact MUCH more notable than the ridiculous "martian" stuff. Diffs:

• rv 1, restores "embarrassing" material
• rv2, reverts Fred Bauder
• rv 3, again reverts Fred Bauder
• rv 4
• rv 5, calls removal "whitewashing"
• removes text about Singer being advisor to Eisenhower ATren (talk) 18:48, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

• Would one of the admins who oversee the climate change probation please topic-ban William M. Connolley from editing any article connected in any way with climate change? Please cut the Gordian knot. Thanks so much. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 00:32, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Bozmo: Biographies are not the best place for his talents anyway Indeed. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 00:42, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
    • If anyone is under the illusion that JWB is acting in good faith, should cure them William M. Connolley (talk) 21:00, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
      • That sort of response (in essence, "I think I'll go work on something else where I don't have to struggle with WMC") seems to be a fairly common one, though... How is that actually a sign of not acting in good faith? ++Lar: t/c 21:25, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

So then: ATren, Bozmo, Lar, JWB, AQFK, SP, LHVU all you lot: do *any* of you think FS is better known as a physicist than a GW skeptic? William M. Connolley (talk) 10:15, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

In specific reply to this point there are a number of examples of people who become better well known (famous or infamous) for a second attribute only because of their position from a first attribute. Obvious examples are Bob Geldof, Sebastian Coe, Gene Robinson and others. In general we do them the courtesy of explaining their primary claim to notability first. Not to the exclusion of the second string in the first sentence. It is a subjective matter but one in which having a strong opinion on the merits of the article subject doesn't help... --BozMo talk 20:30, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

In specific reply to this point it appears that I am being asked a content question. WMC: You cannot have it both ways. You cannot fault me for having opinions about the subject area, to the point of trying to have me removed from enforcement, and then turn around and ask me about content. ++Lar: t/c 21:25, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

• I am frankly puzzled by the rationale for this complaint. The only diffs cited in favour of it are that (1) "WMC edited the article to say that Singer is a global warming skeptic" and (2) that he added/restored a POV tag. I can't see that either edit is actionable. If Singer himself says he's a GW sceptic, that's simply a matter of fact. If WMC thinks there's a POV problem with the article, he's as entitled as any other editor to add a tag to that effect. How is either issue actionable? -- ChrisO (talk) 10:24, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

This is not about Solomon, it's about Singer and WMC. - well, no, it's not. SV started editing Singer, didn't get her way automatically, and on the first resistance to her edits, while the opposing party is trying to resolve this on talk, she comes here citing not on-wiki behaviour, but (bad) off-wiki articles. Unless you (and she) are willing to remove any reliance on these articles, they are very much up for discussion. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:01, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Potentially related COI/N threads

There follows a list of the threads raised at WP:COI/N regarding User:William M. Connolley. I do this in the interest of not duplicating concluded discussions or reinventing the wheel. As of this writing, I have not read WMC's response and am offering no opinion at present. I only searched using the correct spelling of his name, omitted threads where he was not of primary concern, and made no attempt to track down any more general threads that may exist. If anyone finds additional relevant threads, please add them with the date and a brief, neutral summary and note that you have done so. - 2/0 (cont.) 23:24, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

• 2007-04 - related to Real Climate (where WMC no longer contributes), Michael Mann, and an AfD that today would probably be WP:CSD#A10; dismissed with advice to several other users to be mindful of policy and WMC to bear in mind that most editors do not have a technical background.
• 2007-05 - raised by the same user as above on much the same issue, and quickly dismissed (potentially bad faith or WP:POINT, but I would not care to offer an opinion without analyzing a three year old situation, which activity carries no interest for me)
• 2008-10 - external link to Real Climate; dismissed/moved to BLP/N
• 2009-12 - related to Lawrence Solomon; dismissed, noting inaccuracies in the article (note sockpuppetry)
• 2010-04 - dealt with at this board not so long ago.

The 2009-12 thread looks relevant enough that I recommend reading it before commenting. The one from last month should still be fresh in everyone's mind, but re-reading it as well might not go amiss. - 2/0 (cont.) 23:24, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Observation by Short Brigade Harvester Boris

However the admins decide on this case, I suggest that you explain your rationale carefully (not merely "per complainant" as one admin has declared). To establish a precedent that a partisan commentator can knock out a Misplaced Pages editor by objecting to their actions, as the complainant argues here, may not necessarily be in the best interest of the project. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:51, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, would it necessarily be in the best interest of the project if a partisan Misplaced Pages editor knocked out a commentator? Just askin'. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 02:07, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I do not believe either outcome would be desirable. We have policies regarding the second but the admins here are treading new ground with regard to the first, hence my remarks about establishing a precedent. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:19, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

The idea of restricting an editor based on what partisan commentators say should be firmly rejected. SlimVirgin of all people should know that being attacked by partisan commentators isn't grounds for getting rid of Misplaced Pages editors. If that was the criterion she'd have been booted long ago. Quite rightly, she hasn't been, because her conduct - like that of any other editor - is judged by whether it conforms with Misplaced Pages's standards, not by what partisan outsiders might claim. -- ChrisO (talk) 10:30, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I object to the analogy, Chris. If I had articles from a serious writer in a mainstream newspaper accusing me of using WP to smear a living person (note: not just editing that someone disagreed with, but smearing), and the subject himself had written about it, I would certainly back off, of course I would. SlimVirgin 01:43, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by ZP5*

Taking the side of precautionary safety here would be appropriate given the external complaints and many COIN issues raised on WMC. BLPs have greater rights than any editor who has a POV bias. I've seen others get disciplined for simple and fixable copyright issues, however this seems to be a persistent issue here, which should not be ignored. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 05:17, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Disruptive editing

I checked again about what would be sanctioned here with WMC since others seem to blind to it. As per Misplaced Pages:DISRUPT then "Disruptive editing is a pattern of edits, which may extend over a considerable period of time or number of articles, that has the effect of: disrupting progress toward improving an article, or disrupting progress toward the fundamental project of building an encyclopedia." No wonder there is a perception of a lynch mob, the editor has extended disruptions over a considerable period of time. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 14:11, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by BozMo

• (moved from uninvolved because I do follow that page rather closely and do have a content interest on BLPS). Basically FWIW I agree we should topic ban WMC from Singer. Biographies are not the best place for his talents anyway and I think he should walk away from this one. There are plenty of other people to do this. But as SV has pointed out I edited Singer five months ago and have commented on the talk page there twice since so you are welcome to discount my view in forming a consensus. --BozMo talk 21:11, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

To add, just Singer. In general on Climate Change pages I think WMC is a massive net contributer who does a great deal to sort out misunderstandings etc and whose curtness I personally can easily forgive. But biographies do not require quite as much technical skills and on this particular one I have had misgivings for some time about edit summaries refering to embarrassing bits etc. which do not meet my criteria for appropriateness. This call is really more though about the best interests of the project rather than punititive or anything else. WMC is highest added value on the science articles. --BozMo talk 05:59, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I did not introduce any material to embarass Singer, nor do the edit summaries say that. I object to material being removed just to avoid embarassing him. Do you understand the distinction? William M. Connolley (talk) 12:22, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Biographies are not the best place for his talents anyway - if we start using that as a criterion, I can suggest some editors who should be restricted to editing Kindergarten on Simple. Editors are volunteers - they choose how and where to work. We only restrict them if the net contribution in an area is negative, not if we fell that their effort would be better spent somewhere else. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:09, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I see a lot of administrators saying that WMC isn't using his talents the best at this article. What I would like to know is this, what breach or breaches of policies has he done worthy of being banned from the article? I see that he put tags up, a revert and went to the talk page. Shouldn't this still be at the talk page? What other issues are everyone else talking about? I read one of the COI board complaints about this when it was happening and it was closed as not actionable because the editors there didn't see anything to bring any sanctions. The dif is already on this so I'm not repeating. I think others watching this is also interested in hearing exactly what edits that has the administrators so ready to lay down a sanction. I think the talk page should be tried first and that this is premature. I'm not seeing it, sorry. --CrohnieGal 18:20, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

You have a reasonable point. In this specific case WMC is no worse than aggressively wrong. But whereas on scientific subjects his forceful desire for any intuitive disagreement to be rationalised poses no problem on BLPs where people are just voicing concerns it is not helpful to have him putting in a statement and defending it as robustly. --BozMo talk 20:35, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for that phrasing, I was trying to be polite and agreeable. Would it be better to say "in view of the repeated incidents of problematic behavior in editing the BLPs of various folk, it would be best if WMC stayed completely away from all BLPs, or at least all GW BLPs, but certainly from this one" and skip the polite phrasing? ++Lar: t/c 21:16, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Ben Aveling

• I remind people that this is about WMC's alleged behaviour, and whether it violates the climate change probation. It does not matter if WMC's edits are good or bad, only whether they have been conduced with civility. Regards, Ben Aveling 06:59, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure where you got that idea? The complaint is about such things as conflict of interest and difficult editing, and not entirely about civility. And these probations are specifically to guard against "disruptive edits, including, but not limited to, edit warring, personal attacks, incivility and assumptions of bad faith.". So this request board, and this request, are related to both the quality and manner of editing. It really does matter if an individual editors edits are "good or bad", as you would know if you looked at some of the older requests regarding misinterpretation of sources and other inappropriate editing practices. That way you would also see the recent discussion about civility, and how the consensus did not match up with the views you express here. Weakopedia (talk) 09:00, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

• Then let me rephrase myself. This should only be about whether the cited edits violate the climate change probation, that is, whether the cited edits are disruptive. I cannot and will not try to stop people talking about whether WilliamMConnelly/SlimVirgin/FredSinger are good or bad people, or about what they may have done elsewhere on the wiki or in past lives, all I can do is point out that investing in an unbounded discussion is unhelpful to the objective of creating a Fred Singer encyclopedia page - once we start discussing those things, how will we ever know where to stop? Better to focus on the immediate issue, resolve it, then get back to work. And to that end, the cited edits are not, to my eyes, examples of difficult editing. Pending further evidence, I now intend to go and do something useful. Cheers, Ben Aveling 12:19, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Thparkth

A few pedantic points.

• WMC's possible conflict of interest with regard to Fred Singer following the Solomon articles has been considered and dismissed multiple times in the past. Let's not re-try that here.
• Fred Singer's criticism of Misplaced Pages in this recent article is very minor and doesn't mention WMC at all. It only complains briefly, in passing, about his biography mentioning his one-time belief in Martians. This material was not added by WMC or originally moved to the lead by WMC. Therefore Singer has not complained about WMC in any sense.

• Fred Singer is more prominent today as a global warming skeptic than as a physicist, in my opinion. At least, a good-faith argument can be made that this is the case.

• Citations are often appropriate in the lead. Per WP:LEAD, there is not "an exception to citation requirements specific to leads.... controversial subjects may require many citations". There is no reason to assume bad faith in WMC's "citations needed" edits, and it's certainly not vandalism.

Given all this, I can't see any real substance to the enforcement request.

Thparkth (talk) 12:16, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Tiger Woods is better know as a philanderer than as a golfer—should we edit the lede to place that first?--SPhilbrickT 14:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate your concerns about multiple trials;however, Double jeopardy would only seem to apply if a fair due process hearing occurred before. There appears to be recurring issues raised with WMC and Fred Singer and to me that is substantive in and of itself for prophylaxis. If only a goof-faith abstention pledge from WMC. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk

Straw man. There is a vastly greater corpus of sources talking about Tiger Woods as a golfer than as a philanderer. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:21, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Ratel

I suggest WMC withdraws voluntarily from this BLP, as LHvU suggests. It may not be a BLP for too long anyway. A lot of these sceptics are superannuated, retired academics finding the spotlight again by taking the contrary position to mainstream scientific thought, often for a price (this does not refer to FS). We get that. Bigger fish to fry, William. ► RATEL ◄ 15:08, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

WMC adding "RealClimate" as a source for criticism to Singer's BLP

• Singer "dishonest" -
• Disputing Singer's argument -

Note that WMC has a long association with RealClimate, and though he quit several years ago, he still appears in their contributor list (page 2), and Gavin Schmidt still referred to Connolley as one of them as recently as mid-2009 ("...and our own William Connolley"). ATren (talk) 14:35, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Q Science

I agree with many of the comments with respect to WMC's editing, but I don't think that a ban is appropriate. I find SV's claim that WMC should be banned partly because he made over 103 edits since 2004 amusing. Based on experience, it is likely that 30% of those were simply to revert vandalism. On the other hand, SV has made over 160 edits is just 4 days (from 05-13-2010 to 05-17-2010). Over 100 edits in 6 years verses 160 edits in 4 days. It is pretty clear which is more disruptive. Don't get me wrong, I agree with many (maybe even most) of SV's edits (no, I have not read them all), but this is not the way to make a better article. More than 5 edits a day (not counting vandalism repair) by a single editor is just too many. Not even SciBaby is this disruptive.

At any rate, since WMC is no longer an administrator, I don't see how banning him will make this article better. In fact, now that SV has obviously taken over this page, I strongly feel that WMC should be encouraged to monitor the changes, not banned. Q Science (talk) 17:27, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by dave souza

The basic reason given for this request is a dispute over article content, where SlimVirgin went to extraordinary lengths to avoid mentioning Singer's AGW skepticism in the first paragraph of the lead, and came here rather than presenting a reasoned argument on the article talk page. I'm uninvolved, having not edited the article or the talk page, but would note the following. Singer's testimony of 2000 gives his self description as "the founder and president of The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP).... We hold a skeptical view on the climate science that forms the basis of the National Assessment". His views remain the same in his December 2009 article published by Reuters, Climate skeptic: We are winning the science battle | Analysis & Opinion where he is described as "the President of The Science & Environmental Policy Project and Professor Emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia", and describes himself as a lead author in the first NIPCC report. In view of these statements, SlimVirgin seems to be attempting to whitewash Singer on the unwarranted assumption that due mention of his climate skepticism is a slur. All of which should be resolved by presenting evidence on the article talk page with the aim of improving the article rather than using the sanctions to win a dispute over content. . . dave souza, talk 09:03, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Stephan Schulz is NOT Uninvolved

I tried to put a note to that effect, but Vsmith removed it. I will take this to arbcom if Stephan's obviously inappropriate comment as "uninvolved" is not removed. ATren (talk) 20:20, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Didn't "remove" it -- just moved it up and out of the "Results" section. Now you have removed it. The results section is for admin use. The arbcom threat ... seems someone else tried that a while back and didn't get far. I'd suggest further "dispute resolution" first. Vsmith (talk) 20:43, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Vsmith, you freely admit Stephan is not uninvolved, yet you leave his comment in the uninvolved section while moving mine. Why is that? If you're going to police that section, and if you're going to freely admit that Stephan is involved (which is obvious) how do you justify moving mine and not his? ATren (talk) 20:49, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Because that section is for uninvolved administrators, and however uninvolved Stephan may be he is still an admin. And you aren't. Vsmith already told you so, when they said "The results section is for admin use." Weakopedia (talk) 20:56, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I hope one of the admins will remove Stephan Schulz's post from the "involved admin" section. He's clearly deeply involved in this situation as a whole, but he's also involved in the Fred Singer article in particular. Here are some of his recent comments on the talk page, dated May 15, where he objected to me posting articles by or about Singer from The New York Times in Further reading. Overall he's made 26 edits to the article between 2007 and 2010, and 33 posts to talk during the same period. SlimVirgin 21:03, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Will you please stop misrepresenting what I wrote? I did not object to anything about Singer, and I did not complain about you "posting" anything - in fact, I wasn't even aware that you added them. I am unhappy with a large number of links to texts by Singer in the Further Reading section, yes. I don't think they fit in with WP:EL, and I don't think they serve a useful encyclopaedic purpose. I note that William has not, so far, made any comment on that issue, so what does that have to do with anything? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:19, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I have moved it. Stephan Schulz is not uninvolved in this matter, and to claim otherwise in view of all the edits to the article talk is inappropriate. I gave it a subheading all its own but he is free to move it somewhere or retitle it or whatever, just not move it back into the uninvolved admin section. ++Lar: t/c 21:13, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Will you now move your own comments, given that many editors feel that you are involved with WMC in particular at Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/Lar? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:19, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

No, since I am not involved. Nice try though. ++Lar: t/c 21:27, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

• This request is about WMCs editing. Stephan has edited the article, but the complaint doesn't really cover Stephans involvment. You have been mentioned by several admins as being potentially too close to the subject of WMC to be subjective, but you haven't edited the article. So to be honest it seems like you are both either involved or uninvolved. Weakopedia (talk) 21:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
• Because you say so? Where do I apply for that inherent "I'm right" medal you seem to be wearing? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:08, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Stephan you wrote above I note that William has not now either WMC is about to comae along and demand you redact your PA or he considers you a friend per his naming of cats thingy. If your his mate then you can`t really be uninvolved can you? mark nutley (talk) 22:13, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Read User:William M. Connolley/For me/The naming of cats and WP:NPA again, and please for understanding. In other words, Mu. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:34, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, I read this: If you are on personal terms with me, you can use my first name, William. So actually Mark has a point. But Stephan's comment has been moved, making this section moot, so I suggest we just drop it now. ATren (talk) 22:42, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Your quote has no substantial connection to Mark's claim. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:58, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

View by Stephan Schulz

(in response to LHvU's view on how to proceed)

• Strongly dedorse. This just repeats SlimVirgin's empty complaint without any fact-checking or insight. If Singer is primarily a sceptic is a point open for debate - Singer himself certainly gives that aspect of his work top billing. If you want to help find a consensus on that point, discuss it on talk: Fred Singer. Trying to impose your viewpoint by banning editors is not remotely appropriate. The notices "in media of some standing" are generic and do not mention WMC - the only one who does is Solomon, who has been noted, on and off-wiki, as completely unreliable and outright wrong. That leaves nothing of a WMC-specific complaint. The fact that other editors can also edit the article is a complete straw man - that's true of all articles on Misplaced Pages and all editors. By that argument we can ban anybody from any article. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:29, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

(in response to Lar's comment that he could represent WMC's views adequately)

• ...because I've edited it so very often in the last year? Or two? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:06, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

(in response to I'm not sure what (he can fix it if he wants) ++Lar)

To help obviously badly biased and heavily involved editor Lar out:

Copied plainly misleading comment by involved editor Lar that as of 20:30, 20 May 2010 (UTC) can still be found below:

Cenarium is not "entirely uninvolved" as they do have edits in article space in this topic area (however minor). But, be that as it may, new perspectives are always good. As to the proposed action, we've tried 1RR for WMC already, topic wide. And the requirement to respect V, OR and BLP already applies to all editors. No, I think in view of all the evidence presented, The Wordsmith's close is a better one. ++Lar: t/c 20:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)'

As Lar seems to have acknowledged on his talk page but apparently sees not reason to point out here, the claim that Cenarium is involved is entirely without merit. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:14, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Repeating your assertion that I'm involved over and over won't work. Try stamping your foot too, perhaps? It never worked for my kids but hey, maybe. Still, this is your section, so have at it, and with your mischaracterizations of what I said as well. ++Lar: t/c 20:34, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by ChrisO

Frankly, I'm getting the feeling that this is more of an anti-WMC witch-hunt than anything else. It looks very much like yet another case of "throw mud against the wall and hope that it sticks". I've criticised WMC's editing in the past but I can't see any substantive scope for sanctions in this particular case. I'm dismayed by the fact that SlimVirgin has (it would seem) made little or no effort to pursue dispute resolution but has jumped straight over to here in an attempt to obtain an instant ban. When these sanctions were enacted, they were meant to deal with egregious conduct or issues where dispute resolution had broken down. I don't see anything particularly egregious here and dispute resolution doesn't even appear to have been tried.

Admins, if you impose sanctions in this case, you will be setting a very bad precedent - you will be telling everyone involved that there is no point in going through dispute resolution. You will have turned this process into an alternative to DR and you will encourage editors to think that you will ban their "opponents" rather than getting them to resolve their differences. The only sensible way to resolve this is to instruct all concerned to pursue dispute resolution and stick to the rules of BLP. If that breaks down, then it might be appropriate to consider the issue here, but surely not before DR has been pursued. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:33, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Dispute resolution would be prefered; however, SV's appeal seems to include a great deal of past issue evidence which shows cause for concern. I'll remind you that witch hunts were generaly based on spectral evidence. It seems to me folks are looking to see if WMC will volunteer self-restraint, for the better of all, before taking official means. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 05:14, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Bear in mind that this is part of dispute resolution, and I'm using it because it became clear that trying to negotiate with WMC on my own would have led nowhere. SlimVirgin 05:18, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't see any evidence that you've made much effort at dispute resolution beyond a few comments on the talk page. You seem to have escalated it without pursuing elementary dispute resolution. Where is the RfC? Where is the mediation? Where are the requests for outside input? If you had taken this complaint to the ArbCom they'd have told you to go away and take these basic steps before bringing it to them. -- ChrisO (talk) 08:05, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Didn't the last request that SV was involved in include an RfC that she initiated in an attempt to gather wider input? One that was edit warred out rather than addressed? You can't have it both ways. ++Lar: t/c 18:10, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Alex Harvey

I have withdrawn from BLPs for a while, largely from burnout, but I've had a look at this dispute. I think a topic ban of WMC from the Fred Singer article would definitely send the right message -- i.e. that BLP abuse in Misplaced Pages is not tolerated (although it usually is...), and that WMC is not above the rules and untouchable. It would also give WMC a chance, I suppose, to contribute constructively to other articles in the AGW space, even save some of his own time. I think it's fair to say that Fred Singer is not an area that WMC is interested in or especially knowledgeable. Frankly, I think it is a shame WMC doesn't spend more time writing his blog, and less time defacing Misplaced Pages & causing controversy here. Alex Harvey (talk) 02:14, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

not an area that WMC is interested in or especially knowledgeable - events are proving you wrong. It appears I know rather more about Singer than SV et al. William M. Connolley (talk) 16:05, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I do not concur, looking at the edit history. SV has contributed a great deal; the fact you can correct bits of it makes you a lowly proof-reader which is not better than an almighty contributer. --BozMo talk 07:32, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

After two days I'm still not sure what you were trying to say. Could you elaborate? ++Lar: t/c 14:15, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Polargeo

(moved from uninvolved admin section by Lar as Polargeo is not an uninvolved admin under our definition)

• I am commenting here through gritted teeth. Technically I am as uninvolved as Lar is. There is absolutely no action here that should be sanctioned under this enforcement request. If the anti WMC admins such as Lar and the wordsmith had not turned up I would not be here either. Polargeo (talk) 08:57, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

If WMC had made this request against SlimVirgin I feel it in my very bones that those same admins would be calling for WMC to be banned for making frivolous enforcement requests. Polargeo (talk) 09:06, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Check out the google books search . It is certainly not libel to call Fred Singer a skeptic. Polargeo (talk) 09:47, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

So this request is based on two things the fact that WMC called Fred Singer a global warming skeptic (in line with general interpretation of the sources presented and along with several hundred books on the subject) and the fact the he restored a POV tag. Ban him, ban the antichrist how dare he, how dare he. BLP BLP BLP BLP!!!!!!! You cannot go against BLP!!!! I call this whole thing a farce and a storm in a tea cup. Polargeo (talk) 10:01, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I will not call for action against SlimVirgin based on my own principles, not previously evident in other admins' comments. Polargeo (talk) 10:07, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I dispute your assertion that I am anti-WMC. While Dr. Connolley may have an issue with me, I have none with him. If any other name were attached to the pattern of diffs presented, I would advocate for banning them from the article as well. If you believe that I am anti-WMC, I counter that your belief may be due to not having a large enough sample size of interactions between us. I have had several negative interactions with Lar as well (I even opposed his Steward reconfirmation and he opposed my RFA), perhaps I am anti-Lar? I rather dislike a number of things that SlimVirgin does, including her habit of inserting herself into a discussion at the last minute and attempting to change everything (see WT:BLPPROD). I suppose I am biased against her as well. I supported views opposite to yours on Lar's RFC/U, so I am clearly anti-Polarego as well. I should probably withdraw from this entire area, since it is becoming increasingly obvious that I hate everybody. The Wordsmith 17:02, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Jayen466

I believe SlimVirgin's request is justified. To be fair, WMC has on occasion deleted unsourced allegations against Singer, e.g. , . However, this edit by WMC appears to add a self-published source (now defunct) to Singer's BLP, in direct contravention of BLP policy, which WMC is well aware of. This edit reinserts a ref to a site WMC is personally involved in, to contradict an opinion voiced by the article subject. None of the articles presented at the cited site actually discuss Singer, so this appears to be a case of using this BLP as a coatrack for conducting a scientific argument (as well as WP:SYN), rather than a reflection of Singer's reception. This appears to be WP:OR commentary. This edit as well as this is designed to diminish the subject, who continues to be described as an atmospheric physicist in the press.

That's not how we write BLPs. These are simply random edits by WMC from the edit history; their nature, together with the above press cited by SlimVirgin, leads me to the conclusion that a topic ban is in order. --JN466 14:47, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

(Feel free to strike this request for clarification once clarified): Are you calling for a topic ban or a ban from this particular article? Thanks. ++Lar: t/c 15:07, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for the lack of clarity. I meant a ban from this particular BLP. --JN466 20:26, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

At least regarding the "atmospheric physicist" thing, which of Singer's 70-odd publications since 1990 in ISI-indexed journals do you consider "atmospheric physics"? The goal of both Misplaced Pages in general and BLPs in particular is to get it right. Singer has not held a position in a physical sciences department in decades, and he hasn't published in that field in decades. He also describes himself as an "emeritus" (= "retired") professor. Sure, a handful of newspaper stories repeat "atmospheric physicist". But someone who has retired from the army is a retired general, even if he is still a consultant for a cable news network where he talks about military matters. Someone who retired after working construction is a "retired construction worker", even if he now writes books about the construction industry. And a person with a PhD in a given scientific field who has retired from their last academic position a decade ago and who hasn't published in a given field for even longer, simply isn't a scientist any more - they're a retired scientist. "Scientist" isn't a title, it's a career. And as a scientist you do research, you publish, you participate in the intellectual community of your discipline, and you teach. You may be able to call yourself a scientist if you don't do all of them, but certainly you need to do some of them. Reliable sources call Singer retired. And there's no evidence he still works in the field of atmospheric physics. Calling him a retired atmospheric physicist isn't "diminishing" him any more than is calling Colin Powell a retired general. Have a look - that's the way Powell is described. And no one is fighting over calling that either. Guettarda (talk) 04:52, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Guettarda.

• , .
• , .

According to these searches, there is not a single source that has called Singer a "retired atmospheric physicist". --JN466 07:12, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

He's an emeritus (="retired") professor (of environmental science). Thus he has retired from his academic position. Which he says is atmospheric physics. And what about my latter point - how is pointing out that someone is retired "diminishing"? Guettarda (talk) 13:03, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

If sources are united in calling him "an atmospheric physicist and professor emeritus at university X" (which they are), then that is what we should be calling him. Everything else is OR. Very simple. --JN466 13:37, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

The difference between a military rank and an academic title is quite subtle, one has to do with the ability to actively command while the other is a record of achievement that remains regardless whether it is practiced. Colin Powell may correctly be referred to as "General (retired)" but Professor Singer remains a Professor, until and beyond death. I think he might be denoted as no longer practicing (another charming vagary of language, you'd have thought he would have not needed to practice after at 5 or 10 years - being rather good at it by then) but his professorship cannot (I believe) be retired. Emeritus is rather an archaic title, anyway, from a period where only a privileged few were permitted to remain at a place of education after years of service - a type of pension - and is now mainly a courtesy title (a bit like all those Commodores at yacht clubs) conferred much like honour doctorates are bestowed upon persons for reasons of publicity and reward. It is quite obvious the Professor Emeritus Singer has not retired from public life, only the pursuit of that particular branch of academia. LessHeard vanU (talk) 15:37, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

This is all vert well, but it belongs on t:FS, not here. If we're down to this level of subtlety, then it becomes obvious that calling him "retired", whilst it may well be quibbled (personally I think it is still accurate, but as I say that discussion belongs on t:FS) doesn't rise close to the level of a sanctionable offence William M. Connolley (talk) 16:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and on the off chance that a clearly RS stating directly that Singer is retired will make you change your mind: William M. Connolley (talk) 16:36, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

The fact that you would disregard what appears to be unanimous agreement across all reliable sources available in google news and google books to write something in the lead sentence of this BLP that not a single source has written is why you should not in my opinion edit this article. --JN466 17:49, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm getting confused here. This is about whether he is retired or not, yes? And we have a direct statement from U Virginia that he *is* retired. And you're still claiming we have no RS for this? See ? The heading is "Retired Faculty". Singer is listed. Are you still arguing? William M. Connolley (talk) 18:11, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

He is retired from the university's faculty. He is not "a retired atmospheric physicist". He continues to work and publish as such. You are still arguing for an unsourced statement that is contradicted by every single published source to remain in a BLP. (You can call him a "retired professor emeritus", if you like, but that would be rather tautological, would it not?) --JN466 18:32, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

BLP noticeboard discussion here. Since talk page consensus on this issue seems impossible, and the process on this page is pitifully incapable of dealing with the problem, it appears necessary to get even more eyes on this situation. --JN466 19:46, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Hans Adler

This complaint is a farce. There may be some valid core, somewhere. Actually, I consider it quite likely given how abrasive WMC has been against myself in the past. But this valid core, if any, is impossible to see behind the thick mixture of fog, smoke, snow, sand, and locusts. I don't have the time to respond to anything that was said against WMC that was wrong, so I will just address one point.

SlimVirgin quotes Singer's complaint: "In my own case, my Wiki bio also carried additional malicious accusations; the most bizarre one was that I believed in the existence of Martians."

• According to others who have checked the edits, WMC didn't introduce the claims, he just reverted their removal. Also, WMC is not mentioned by Singer.
• Also, whether true or not, the claim regarding Martians is certainly not original to Misplaced Pages. With Google I found no less than 17 sites that mirror the following text: "March 1960: The Martian moon Phobos, generally accepted as a celestial body, actually may be an artificial satellite launched long ago by an advanced Martian race, according to Dr. S. Fred Singer, special advisor to President Eisenhower on space developments. 'I would be very disappointed if it turns out to be solid,' said the white House advisor. If the figures were correct, he stated, then Phobos undoubtedly is a hollow, artificial satellite. If it is, he said, its purpose would probably be to sweep up radiation in the Mars' atmosphere, so that Martians could safely operate around their planet. Dr. Singer also pointed out that Phobos would make an ideal space base, both for Martians and earthlings." It appears this may be the original source of the claim, although according to Phobos (moon) it was "Singer, S. F.; Astronautics, February 1960", a letter to the editor.
• It's a bit odd that Singer complains about being connected to belief in Martians, but doesn't say clearly what's wrong with the source used for the connection. This has been around on the web since at least March 2002, so surely he has heard about it before.
• Let's look at the paragraph preceding Singer's complaint. Here we find conspiracy theory talk: " machinations of a small but influential band of British and US climate scientists who played the lead role in the IPCC reports. It appears that this group, which controlled access to basic temperature data, was able to produce a 'warming' by manipulating the analysis of the data, but refused to share information on the basic data or details of their analysis with independent scientists who requested them " – This is seriously distorted, and unless he gets good money for saying such things in public there is reason to doubt his sanity, or at least that he has looked at the emails in question in context.
• Now the paragraph following the complaint against Misplaced Pages: "We learn from the e-mails that the ClimateGate gang was able to "hide the decline" by applying what they termed as 'tricks,' " – Again, transparently totally false, as has been well known for a long time. In fact, the real meaning of "hide the decline" is so well known by now that I am not going to repeat it here.

Hans Adler 21:11, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Yeah. I will refrain from expressing any opinion on whether a sanction is warranted on the basis of William's editing, but I will express my extreme disappointment in any admin who attaches weight to Solomon's essays, or Singer's, for the purpose of deciding on an appropriate response to this request. MastCell  21:20, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I seldom find myself disagreeing with either of you two. But the diffs I posted in the preceding section above are not indicative of good BLP editing. --JN466 02:18, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I also consider most of the diffs you presented as problematic. I wasn't fully aware of them when I started writing and should have made it clearer when I finished. Sorry for that. However, I don't consider SlimVirgin's original two diffs convincing at all, and most of the discussion so far was not convincing. (That excludes your contribution.) It's not absurd to say in the first sentence that Fred Singer is a global warming skeptic, because that's what he is most notable for nowadays. An atmospheric physicist is someone who does actual research as supposed to someone who merely takes part in a political debate, the kind of distinction that newspapers are notoriously bad at, so "retired", while it may not be justifiable based on the sources, was probably correct. There are many examples of scientists who get whimsical in their later years, and where we can't completely suppress the details of that it's hard to get the balance of a biography right so that it adequately describes the overall accomplishments without giving credence to any fringe theories they support later. SV currently makes the impression that she might tend to the opposite extreme compared to WMC, although this may simply be due to the fact that addressing a one-sided problem always looks like a one-sided activity, even if it is completely fair and neutral. Hans Adler 13:19, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Result concerning William M. Connolley

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators and is not to be used to conduct discusson or debate. Comments by non-admins, and any discussion or debate by other than uninvolved administrators, will be moved to the section above.

(Remarks by BozMo moved to above and since partly struck through Misplaced Pages:General_sanctions/Climate_change_probation/Requests_for_enforcement#Comment_by_BozMo --BozMo talk 09:29, 17 May 2010 (UTC))

• Agree with BozMo that topic banning WMC from Singer seems prudent. BLPs are indeed not the best place for WMC's not inconsiderable talents. I see no need to discount BozMo's view in this. ++Lar: t/c 00:24, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
• I concur that a topic ban from this one article is probably necessary. I'm not sure whether a ban from all Climate-related BLPs would be helpful or harmful, but I do believe that it should be looked at more closely to see if it would be a good idea. The Wordsmith 00:29, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

• I would appreciate it greatly if one of you could expand upon your rationale for banning WMC from this article please. Thank you, NW (Talk) 01:04, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
  • "Per the material presented by the complainant, SlimVirgin" ++Lar: t/c 01:34, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
    • I would appreciate it if you could expand upon that. Thank you, NW (Talk) 02:31, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
      • I would appreciate your explaining why further expansion is necessary. SV seems to have laid out a very thorough explanation. All you have to do is read it, it's all there. I note that, below, LHvU has given the same reasoning, but in his own words. If you want me to write up a paragraph or two saying the same thing, yet again, I can. But I think SV adequately explained this. It will be in the record if we close this the way that onsensus seems to be leaning. I endorse SV's reasons for requesting a topic ban. I endorse BozMo and tWS's endorsement of SV's reasons for requesting a topic ban as well. Finally, I endorse LHvU's explanation of why he endorses SV's reasons for requesting a topic ban as well. ++Lar: t/c 14:32, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Note: BozMo has struck the part of his statement supporting an article ban. He certainly can change his mind but my endorsement was of his view prior to that strike. He was right the first time. ++Lar: t/c 13:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
• I am with NW on this - I would like to see a serious elaboration on why an article ban would be the best step to take at this point in time. I am not seeing even the need for full protection at this time, though that may change. I would also once again (nothing personal on you, SV) like to urge far more diligence in pursuing honest dispute resolution at the talkpage before filing a request. - 2/0 (cont.) 02:34, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
  • I am afraid I don't see things this way at this time. WMC has been brought here time and time again and every time another warning is given. This is a ban from a single article, not a ban from all GW related BLPs (which might well be a good idea, but that's not what is being advocated) much less a ban from the entire GW area (which might well be a good idea, but, again, that's not what is being advocated).

Note: I suppose we could issue WMC yet another admonishment to be a better editor, and state that this time we really, Really, REALLY mean it, and that if we are once again ignored we are going to be very, Very cross, so much so that we may actually admonish him again and state that this time we really, Really, REALLY, REALLY mean it. Honest! No fooling. ++Lar: t/c 14:32, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

• I think it would be preferable if Dr Connolley were to withdraw from editing the article, and it to be enforced if not done voluntarily. My rationale is that there is another slow edit/revert war, where the possibility of Dr Connolley and another editor of differing viewpoint having a meeting of minds resulting in a consensus is really rather remote. Furthermore, the article is a BLP being edited by Dr Connolley to a Climate Change viewpoint - where a distinguished and notable physicist is being primarily recorded as a CC skeptic, which views would not be be so notrworthy if not for the subjects prominence as a scientist - rather than as a review of the individuals most notable achievements in his field, which I feel is inappropriate. Also, the editing of the article has previously been noted outside of WP, in media of some standing, as being biased toward a certain aspect of the subject's published work, in a manner not regarded as neutral, with Dr Connolley being named as one of those whose contributions have given cause to raise these concerns. There are many good editors who are able to contribute toward providing a balanced article on the subject, noting their recent contributions to the discussion relating to Climate Change, who have similar stances regarding AGW as Dr Connolley, but without his history and consequent "reputation" in editing this subject, or his rather combative manner when faced with edits he does not care for. Dr Connolley's withdrawal from editing the article would not, I feel, detract as much from it as his continuing presence would. LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:25, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Endorse. ++Lar: t/c 14:32, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

• I was asked to expand upon my viewpoint by NuclearWarfare above, so I will do so here. My original comment is the second in this section. Anyway, I find the diffs presented by SlimVirgin and others to be highly disturbing. The fact that they come from three consecutive years turns it into a pattern. In 2008, there was the Mars nonsense in the lede. In late 2009, diffs have been presented by ATren of WMC sourcing content to RealClimate, which is wrong on several different levels. SlimVirgin's diffs come from 2010. When looked at together, they seem to demonstrate a persistent inability to comply with our policies while editing this article. Therefore, a ban from this particular article appears necessary to prevent further harm. The Wordsmith 18:21, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
  • I agree in part with much of what you have said. The issue that I have is that I'm not seeing perfect behavior on all parties in the dispute, not just with WMC. Topic banning WMC to me would seem a lot like pushing one party out so that the other side can write the article how they want it. NW (Talk) 20:55, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
    • Who else do you have issue with from a behavior aspect? Raise them and they can be dealt with too. However, this request is about WMC, so that is where we should start. I don't think removing him from this one BLP is going to mean the BLP has no representation from "his" side (since you refer to the "other" side...), in particular I suspect that Stephan Schulz will do a perfectly adequate job of representing WMC's views in this matter. ++Lar: t/c 21:31, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

• I seem to be seeing a consensus that WMC should not be editing this article. WMC himself has offered at best only a partial defense of his action (instead, his statement seems to take a page out of L Ron Hubbard's philosophy of "Don't ever defend. Always attack."). With that in mind, I propose the following closure:
  • William M. Connolley (talk · contribs) is indefinitely banned from editing the article Fred Singer or its associated Talkpage. The Wordsmith 17:14, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
    • Make it so. (I wasn't going to suggest talk, only article, but sure) We've sunk enough time into this already, it ought to be pretty cut and dried given the evidence. ++Lar: t/c 17:53, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

• Seeing how AE at CC has turned into, I am going to step in as uninvolved admin. I'm entirely uninvolved in this area and have no intent or interest other than to help with this process. With respect to this request, first off I think outside media should not be taken into account when considering a sanction, with a few exceptions, but it's not one of them. The reason is more or less WP:NPOV which could be affected if we sanctioned or altered content, the first weighing on the second, based on external pressure. Therefore in those cases, and as usual, we should consider diffs and make our own analysis of them. It has also been pointed out that we should be wary when applying sanctions not to unduly unbalance the different views in a content dispute. This principle is at the base of our dispute-resolution mechanisms, and this can be detected in the ArbCom principle to look at all sides of a dispute. Now the specifics. Of the diffs provided in the complaint, (1) removing material even if properly sourced is acceptable editing and indeed an editorial matter (and necessary part of ensuring NPOV, encyclopedic writing, etc). WMC provided reasons for removal, it's not vandalism, I also note that the very sentence caused a multi-party edit-war . (2) The description (or lack thereof) to give of a group is an editorial matter as well, and discussion should happen to find a NPOV one, it worked in the article on the group and can work here too. (3) The weight to give to the person's different aspects is also an editorial matter - it should of course be given special attention because of BLP issues but I note that WMC didn't attempt to reinsert skeptic in first place after SV removed it, and the assertion is largely supported by RS, so it's not a BLP violation. It isn't obvious in those edits that WMC intended to tarnish the subject, and we shouldn't sanction based on that without being certain. (4) The removal of the categories while removing the further readings section was probably accidental, and it may be too bold an edit but not sanctionable. (5) This use of 'rubbish' was not against policy, and as seen again recently the community tolerates this kind of uses.
  Thus I do not believe that there are grounds for sanctions in those edits, nor in adding a POV tag, which WMC explained on talk. This is a content dispute, it's frequent for major changes in a controversial article to cause such and is normal. Editors should discuss to resolve disagreements and we can't sanction based on an editor's position in a content dispute. With regards to the cited external media, as I said I do not view them as relevant to this request, as others do, thus I won't comment on that. The material about martians was not inserted by WMC, also it did not say that Singer believed in martians; he did reverted some removals of those, although it was in 2008 long before the probation. The power extended to admins here is for actions within the scope of this probation. I can see that there has been some problematic edits in the past, such as using sources which are not reliable enough and opinionated editing. However in the last few weeks, from what has been provided, there's been no characterized disruptive editing or edit-warring. A ban from the talk page would require severe disruption or violation of restrictions which I'm not aware of, so I don't see this as justified and thus it would unjustifiably unbalance a content dispute. I don't see here material enough to warrant an indefinite article ban either, in light of precedents or accepted standards. Now concerning a temporary ban or restriction on editing this article, I am not entirely decided, mostly because the above is heavily convoluted and unclear, again there has been some problematic editing by WMC on this article, but from what I can see of recent, it's not to the level where ban is needed, although WMC is too often on the edge. So not a ban, but something more moderate seems appropriate, considering the 'history'. I would propose actions as follows: on this article, for the next 2-3 months, WMC is restricted to 1RR and warned to scrupulously respect content policies especially WP:V, WP:OR and WP:BLP, to source each added claim, use only reliable sources, and when uncertain or disputed to submit them to talk; violations may result in an article ban. Cenarium (talk) 06:07, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Should not the requirement to scrupulously apply the noted policies also extend to when removing content, noting the relevant policy within the edit summary, equally? Otherwise, a very comprehensive and considered proposal - much like those I made when I first commented here. LessHeard vanU (talk) 15:55, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Cenarium is not "entirely uninvolved" as they do have edits in article space in this topic area (however minor). But, be that as it may, new perspectives are always good. As to the proposed action, we've tried 1RR for WMC already, topic wide. And the requirement to respect V, OR and BLP already applies to all editors. No, I think in view of all the evidence presented, The Wordsmith's close is a better one. ++Lar: t/c 20:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't remember having made any edits or had interactions which could make me involved in any way, I see it's been brought up on your talk page; of course I'm open to reconsider. I'll clarify the sanction I proposed, yes I noted WMC has been 1RR-restricted on CC articles previously, though we can do it again and on a specific article. All users should respect content policies, and even more so on articles on probation, and refrain from edit-warring. I have considered the diffs, and those which happened since the beginning of this probation are in my view insufficient to justify an indefinite ban, the probation requires disruptive edits, and I don't think that threshold is met. This probation is not retroactive, we can't impose sanctions such as bans primarily based on editing which happened prior to its enactment. We should consider prior history but to a certain point. Therefore it seems to me that a 1RR restriction on this article and requirement to strictly abide to content policies at the risk of an article ban, submit edits to the talk page when not clearly within policy or disputed, as well as sources wrt reliability, is the most appropriate action.

The Wordsmith has imposed and logged a ban, without further discussing or announcing it here. Under the circumstances, it doesn't seem proper to me and we should discuss on modifying the sanction. I'm aware consensus is needed to change it. Cenarium (talk) 21:20, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I perhaps should have used "technically" rather than "not entirely un-". In case it wasn't clear from context,(as I thought it was when I discussed your proposed close instead of moving your comment out of the section) I do not have any issue whatever with your participation, as an uninvolved admin, in this enforcement board, and consider you, for the purpose and under the definition we used, uninvolved. I hope that clarifies matter. Stephan Schulz is apparently engaged in provocative baiting/pot-stirring using my comment, and you, as chesspieces.

That said, I don't think your proposed close is strong enough. He's already been under 1RR not just on this article but topic wide and it did no good. I'm entirely convinced by the evidence presented that his edits to Singer are problematic. What would it take to convince you? That is, why was the evidence lacking? That might be a good thing to explore. Alternatively, is there some compromise that might be reached? A time limited ban instead of indefinite? ++Lar: t/c 22:01, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Sanctions, especially bans or blocks, should not be based on edits made before the beginning of this probation, as implied by the probation terms requiring prior warning before sanction. Therefore to justify a block or ban, according to the probation terms, there should be evidence of disruptive edits made to this article or its talk page since January (or violations of specific restrictions, but there were none). I have reviewed the edits posted by The Wordsmith as evidence to justify the ban; they were from 2008 or 2009, with one exception from this year, two edits adding that Fred Singer was 'retired' and a 'global warming skeptic' to the lead. The discussions about those (on the talk page and elsewhere) didn't show that they violated content policies, therefore they're not actionable. Likewise for the rest of WMC's edits to this article starting May, 13 (anterior edits by WMC this year are , , ), exceptions being the addition to the lead of an unsourced claim about the book 'The Changing Global Environment' which violates WP:V/WP:OR, he later agreed to remove it , and the likely excessive cn tagging, but those are not sufficient for an indefinite article ban in my view, with no pattern of edit-warring. The interactions with other editors are often not good, but not excessively so for standards and precedents in CC articles. I think it's sufficient to justify the sanction I proposed, though. As for a temporary ban, I couldn't envisage more than a month or a talk page ban, but I'm not comfortable applying one in the middle of a content dispute with no solid evidence of disruptive editing. And such has not been demonstrated to exist. Cenarium (talk) 03:44, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

On this procedural point Cenarium is correct. Personally if I was a benevolent despot I would not have WMC editing the Singer article, but I moved my comments saying this higher up because I have been involved editing against him on this article (not recently). However, my considered view is we just do not have grounds to do this ban on evidence presented and we cannot use diffs before that under the probation. Maybe, just maybe, he is self moderating which we should encourage. I think we need to deal with the issue elsewhere. The only way of getting him off Singer at present is WP:IAR. --BozMo talk 08:36, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I share BozMo's concern that there is not the consensus required to enact a topic ban on WMC, even though it is also my preferred option. The points raised by Cenarium are valid. I have also noted that there is nothing to say that an uninvolved admin may not unilaterally enact an enforcement of a request, but I strongly prefer that actions with potential repercussions - as would be the case involving editors such as WMC - did have consensus. LessHeard vanU (talk) 10:26, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Attention: This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.

Request concerning ATren

User requesting enforcement

Hipocrite (talk) 13:04, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

User against whom enforcement is requested

ATren (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Sanction or remedy that this user violated

Misplaced Pages:General sanctions/Climate change probation

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

1. States that it is "intentionally condescending and insulting." It is a violation of WP:CIVIL to be "intentionally condescending and insulting." Edit summary states "condescending speech is all you're capable in a debate." It is not appropriate to denigrate the debating capabilities of ones intellectual opponents.
2. User:ATren/WMCSpeak States that When insults and condescends, I will do the same. Users are not permitted to respond to incivility with incivility. An eye for an eye, in other words, leaves everyone blind.

Diffs of notifications or of prior warnings against the conduct objected to (if required)

I contend that ATren is fully engaged in this sanctions page. I can dig out his pro-forma warning at some point if hoop-jumping is insisted on.

Enforcement action requested (block, topic ban or other sanction)

Him to stop being incivil on purpose, regardless of provication. If he can't avoid incivility, a topic ban on the area that he cannot avoid incivility on.

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

Like I said, an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. Only one party has an announced intention to be incivil - this is worse than failing to be civil, it's intentionally failing. Not acceptable. Hipocrite (talk) 13:10, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

The requesting user is asked to notify the user against whom this request is directed of it, and then to replace this text with a diff of that notification. The request will normally not be processed otherwise.

Discussion concerning ATren

Statement by ATren

Every comment I am making is a variation of something WMC has said in the past. He has been warned repeatedly, yet he continues to do it. Unless someone believes WMC is not in control of his actions, his incivility is no less intentional than mine. I am fully willing to remove all uncivil comments when WMC does the same, and I assert the right to respond to future incivility with the same level of incivility, as long as admins are not going to deal with this issue.

I'll also note that SlimVirgin (a true uninvolved editor who has done very good work cleaning up the mess that was Fred Singer's BLP) is considering withdrawing from editing here because of WMC's aggressiveness . This has to stop. If nobody will stand up to WMC, then I will. Everyone worries about losing WMC, what about losing good editors like SlimVirgin? If WMC is chasing such experienced editors away, doesn't that severely impact the "net contribution" calculation for WMC?

I am going to work now, I will respond more later. ATren (talk) 13:16, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Is it accurate to state that you think WMC should be restricted in some way for his possibly unintentional incivility? It is accurate to state that I think WMC should be should be restricted in some way for his possibly unintentional incivility. How can you justify being intentionally incivil when you think someone who may be unintentionally incivil should be restricted in some way? Hipocrite (talk) 13:19, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Do you really believe that after all this time WMC's incivility is unintentional? How can an explicit action like calling someone a troll be "unintentional"? And even if it is unintentional, then why is someone who cannot adhere to the basic standard of civil discourse still allowed to edit? BTW, this is my section for response; I'd appreciate if you would respond further down below. ATren (talk) 13:26, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I ignore all sectioning - always have, and always will. You do the same, so we're in good company. I am forced to WP:AGF about WMC's incivility and state that it is not stated as intentional, but is, regardless, disruptive. This is different than your incivility, which is both disruptive and intentional. In fact, while WMC needs to be stopped from disrupting the encyclopedia, you need to be stopped from intentionally disrupting the encyclopedia - one could argue in good faith that you are actually vandalizing (your incivility is not even possibly in good faith - you have stated that you are being incivil on purpose). You both need to stop, but, right now, you're the easier target by an order of magnitude based on your stated intention to disrupt. Hipocrite (talk) 13:32, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Unintentional disruption (if you must believe that) is still disruption. If WMC truly cannot control his actions and his actions are alienating good editors then it he should be sanctioned even if he is acting in good faith. The ban lists are littered with editors who had very good faith but were apparently incapable of controlling their behavior, but for some reason, WMC's disruption persists years later. So my response to you is, even if it's unintentional disruption, at some point it must be stopped. ATren (talk) 13:40, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

You appear to be making an argument for a sanction request about WMC's incivility. Disruption should be stopped, not met with more disruption. You have stated that since WMC is disrupting via incivility, which I do not dispute you will do the same. Thus, you should be blocked, as you are intentionally disruptive - you, to draw a parallel, are Willy on Wheels after his second page move, while WMC is someone who constantly delinks dates. Both are sanctioned - one is banned. Hipocrite (talk) 13:43, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Hipocrite, it's not being stopped, and good editors are being chased away. Someone has to step up and confront him. It's been going on for years and shows no sign of stopping. And, yes, others are banned for long term good faith incivility. Remember Child of Midnight? He was unquestionably good faith and he was banned because of his inability to maintain a level of decorum. Good faith has it's limits, and I submit that the limit is reached when other highly respected editors are chased away (SlimVirgin is just the latest).

As a side note, would you join me in filing a request for action against WMC's continuing disruption? You acknowledge above that WMC is uncivil, and that it's disruptive, so you should be supporting action which minimizes disruption. Would you do that? ATren (talk) 13:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

NOT "an eye for an eye"

I would like to point out that this is explicitly not an eye for an eye. I am engaging WMC on his own terms in an attempt to communicate with him. It's obvious from his edit history that he considers such dialog to be fine, and in fact I suspect that he even has a greater level of respect for people who engage in that kind of discourse. It's not something that comes naturally to me (hence the disclaimers I posted) but if that level of speech is necessary to communicate with WMC, then I'm willing to do it. Or, at least, I'm willing to try it if that's what he'll respond to. In the thread in question, WMC asserts a negative based on lack of information, something that is obviously logically wrong. He has a history of ruthlessness with editors who make such similar logic errors, and I honestly believe he would demand the same of those dealing with his obvious errors. So where he might dismiss a polite note about his error, a more direct, aggressive approach might be what it takes for him to recognize it.

It's not an eye for an eye, it's trying to engage an editor who thus far refuses to engage with those who disagree with him civilly. ATren (talk) 14:04, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments by others about the request concerning ATren

Apply the same equitable relief that WMC would receive for incivility, close and dismiss this. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 13:23, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I will have a proposed resolution in the uninvolved admins section shortly but for now I merely want to comment... I understand ATren's frustration with WMC's approach. Many folk are frustrated. But Hip is right. An eye for an eye is not acceptable. We should try to stay above WMC's unacceptably caustic commentary, regardless of whether it is appropriately handled or not. So my proposed close is going to be an admonishment to ATren that they can collect diffs if they like, they can even compile a chart of WMC-to-polite speak but they cannot themselves engage in caustic commentary, even if WMC routinely gets away with it, because that's how it is... the playing field isn't level and they are going to be held to a higher standard than WMC and they will just have to learn to deal. ++Lar: t/c 13:26, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

(e.c.) Lar, with all due respect, been there done that. It's still happening. And now we have a case where an unquestionably good editor is being chased by his behavior. I will strongly object to any admonishment for my handful of uncivil comments if this board refuses to deal with the constant incivility by WMC. WMC is well into double digit requests for incivility, personal attacks, and BLP violations. Highly respectable previously uninvolved editors such as SlimVirgin and Cla68 are included in those requesting enforcement. Yet this group of admins still refuses to act. So how about this: sanction WMC and me equally - give us both the exact same topic ban. I will accept it without complaint as long as it's handed out equally, even though our respective level of transgression differs by an order of magnitude. If that's what it takes, I'm willing to take a larger sanction if it also means that admins finally act to sanction a long term problem editor. ATren (talk) 13:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

It is not a higher standard to demand that users not be intentionally incivil, but assume that other incivil users are just bad at being civil. It is, in fact, a constant standard. I have brought every user who has stated they are intentionally disrupting the encyclopedia to this enforcement board. Hipocrite (talk) 13:33, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I see the intention is to correct WMC where this Probation process has failed. The Probation can be a disruption too. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 13:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

This illustrates the problems that WTC is causing. He regularly insults editors and sources; it's actually reaching the point where more of his posts contain insults than don't. Today he called ATren a troll and the New York Times rubbish; yesterday he called me a liar. In addition he seems to have no working knowledge of the content policies. It's impossible to work with. I've decided to continue working on the Singer article in my userspace until it's dealt with, mostly to keep myself safe because the article's under probation. Anyone choosing to interact with WMC is going to have a hard time. If you don't respond, he accuses you of ignoring him. If you do respond, you risk getting drawn into the kind of exchange that will land you here. SlimVirgin 13:34, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I see the basic problem is that he's an old-style Wikipedian, one more interested in content than in politics and game-playing. He needs to adjust to the new reality. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 13:38, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Except he's wrong on the content too. He's dismissing a New York Times reference based on Google hits. He has a history of adding blogs to BLPs. He's edit warred with an arbcom member on a BLP, repeatedly adding an out-of-context factoid to a BLP intro, an edit which I challenge anyone to assert was within miles of being good content. It's all fundamentally against policy and when people disagree with him he attacks. ATren (talk) 13:46, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

If you have a problem with another editor being incivil, please raise an enforcement request, which, if it's actually about civility and not content, I'll gladly support. Or raise an enforcement request about content, but narrowly tailor it to content that in unarguably poor, as opposed to just stuff you disagree with. You are taking this one off-topic. Other editors being incivil does not make incivility acceptable. Hipocrite (talk) 13:37, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

And, lets be perfectly clear - while I would never call ATren a troll, an editor who pledges to be incivil, is, in fact, trolling. Hipocrite (talk) 13:39, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

He called me that before any of my recent comments. ATren (talk) 13:46, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Thparkth

• Atren, this is a bad road to go down. No matter how provoked you feel, you are ultimately responsible for your own actions. If those actions include deliberate incivility, you are likely be judged negatively for that. I think everyone here understands how frustrated you feel, but Hipocrite is correct when he talks about "an eye for an eye" making everyone blind. If you made a voluntary commitment to remain civil in your interaction with WMC, I'm pretty sure everyone would respect that and that would be the end of the matter. Don't martyr yourself over this. You are too valuable an editor, and this is too trivial an issue. Thparkth (talk) 13:46, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Just so. I cannot conceive of how I could possibly agree more strongly with this than I already do. Hence my proposed close. But I'm willing to toughen it all the way to a warning that blocks will be forthcoming if this course continues. Because it just isn't the right road. ++Lar: t/c 13:53, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Lar, if I file another enforcement request for WMC, who is already on civility patrol, will he get a significant sanction? There are plenty of incivil diffs since his last admonishment. If I am going to be threatened a block for a few minor edits (none of which are worse than anything WMC has said repeatedly) how could that be justified in light of WMC's continued incivility, which is driving away good editors? ATren (talk) 14:19, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

You are doing it on purpose. Hipocrite (talk) 14:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, in an attempt to engage with an editor for whom that kind of discourse is accepted (since he does it himself). I honestly believe he doesn't listen unless you engage him in the same manor in which he engages you -- in other words, the same impulse that causes him to make aggressive comments without him knowing it, causes him to ignore civil comments from others. I really believe he dismisses civility as weakness of argument, and my attempts to engage in a more aggressive manor are an attempt to break through that dismissal. If you are going to assume good faith in his incivility, then at least extend the same courtesy to me. ATren (talk) 15:00, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

You're wrong. And obviously so, becuase it is trivial to find counterexamples. This is pure Assume Bad Faith on your part William M. Connolley (talk) 15:02, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, then please present those examples here, and please be sure to include examples of civil engagement with those who are disagreeing with you. I will then present examples of incivility with disagreers, and we can compare. OK? ATren (talk) 15:08, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Please stop trying to derail this enforcement request. This is about your intentional incivility, which is inexcusable. Finding other incivil people is the subject of a different request. This standard delaying tactic is why the admins here are failing - the first one that saw those diffs should have closed this section with an only-final warning to you that if you are intentionally incivil again you will be banned from this topic area for increasing lengths. How hard is this to do? Hipocrite (talk) 15:11, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

You do have a point. This is a small one. I'll try to scare up another uninvolved admin to endorse my proposed close. ATren, do consider starting another request. I know you are frustrated. I know that you will have to do a lot of work. But do consider it instead of acting out. ++Lar: t/c 15:25, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

It was not intended as "acting out", it was a good faith attempt to engage an editor for whom incivility is part of his habitual discourse. It was an attempt to discover if he'd respond better to a more direct and aggressive tone, because 2 years of civility has not reached him. I can't help it if it's perceived as something different, but I am somewhat disappointed at the lack of good faith assumed of me -- WMC's incivility is somehow excused as "unintentional" even though it's been happening for years, while my attempt to deal with it in a different way is met with assumptions of nefarious intent. I will take your advice though, to put this aside and gather that request. ATren (talk) 15:34, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

You are directed not to be intentionally incivil for any reason.Hipocrite (talk) 15:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

ATren, if you want to file an enforcement request, you can. But please, if you want to even have a 20% chance of success, make sure your own behaviour is impeccable first, and bring us, oh, 100 or so diffs, all of which are incontrovertible. If even one is even a bit questionable, where some reasonable doubt might exist, we will have no choice but to find against you and f0r WMC. Sorry, but that's how the playing field is here. Level. ++Lar: t/c 15:02, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Lar, I've done that. It goes nowhere (see a few months back when 2/0 passionately defended WMC after a request with 20-odd very compelling diffs). And good editors continue to get bullied off. It has to stop, and this RFE is ineffective. Now, I will probably take your advice and disengage again to go back into research mode, but seriously, how much evidence is needed? Do we have to take this all the way to arbcom for any reasonable handling of this problem editor to occur? ATren (talk) 15:14, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I know you have tried. Keep trying. ++Lar: t/c 15:25, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment by WMC

I see a lot of "apply the same to ATren as to WMC" here. Even ATren has asked for that. Fine; I'm on a civility sanction, no? How about we apply that to ATren, too?

Also User:ATren/WMCSpeak should be deleted as an attack page. Ideally ATren himself would realise this and ask for it to be deleted William M. Connolley (talk) 13:50, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

If you are on a civility sanction then perhaps you should not be calling other editors "Trolls" and "liars"? mark nutley (talk) 13:53, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

That is a good point. WMC, what is your response to that? An unsatisfactory response would cause me to be very cross. So cross that I might actually admonish you not to give unsatisfactory responses. Or worse. ++Lar: t/c 14:17, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

My response is that I was responding to a post in which ATren actively and deliberately set out to insult me William M. Connolley (talk) 15:00, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

No, you called me a troll before any of this stuff today. Try again. ATren (talk) 15:02, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Which you actually were (you know: Trolling) - WMC called you on it per WP:SPADE. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 16:05, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps it was a response in advance? If WMC can divine your intent accurately ("actively and deliberately set out to"...), perhaps he can divine it before you actually post? Please assume good faith here about WMC. ++Lar: t/c 15:05, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

As ATren had just made a comment that very much could be defined as trolling - he didn't call it "in advance" - he called it the spade he saw. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 16:05, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Lar, given your tone, I suggest you remove your comment from the section which you believe is for uninvolved admins only. You are giving the appearance of a lack of impartiality, and per your own belief, editing that section is a use of admin tools. Hipocrite (talk) 15:06, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Eh? Do you think I should recuse because I am prejudiced against ATren and in favor of WMC? Is that the suggestion? I think my proposed close is a good one. ++Lar: t/c 15:10, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

So grow a pair buck up and close this as opposed to snarkingusing mild sarcasm all over. Inform ATren that intentional incivility is inexcusable, and if it continues, he will be topic banned from the area for increasing lengths of time, and then delete his attack page. How hard is this admin 101 shit?If you'd like, I'll happily tell you exactly what actions to take on all the other cases in front of this sanction board, with reasonable confidence that I'd get them all right. Hipocrite (talk) 15:12, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Hipocrite, let me ask you: is this intentional incivility or unintentional incivility? We all know how important the distinction is. ATren (talk) 15:15, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Intentional incivility is always inexcusable - it is a bad faith action. Unintentional incivility is problematic if consistant. However, you are not intentionally incivil, by admission. Here, I'll give the admins a hint suggestion - "ATren is informed that intentional incivility is always unacceptable. If ATren is intentionally incivil, he may banned from the entire climate change topic, broadly construed, by any admin for up to one week. After two such blocks, the period will increase to one month. After five such blocks, the period will increase to one year. After one year without a topic ban, this sanction will expire." Hipocrite (talk) 15:21, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

And I'm asking you, Hipocrite, is "grow a pair" and "how hard is this admin 101 shit?" intentional incivility or unintentional incivility? Since the distinction is suddenly important, I think you should either state that it was intentional or strike it. ATren (talk) 15:28, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

You are right. I'll rewrite those. See how easy that was - someone who wasn't the target of my words told me they were wrong and I undid them. Hipocrite (talk) 15:35, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Might I then ask why you did not extend the same courtesy to me? You could have engaged me on my talk rather than running to mommy. ATren (talk) 15:40, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

H: Snarking? Grow a pair? I think your tone is not helpful. I proposed a close, below. If some other uninvolved admin agrees with it, great. But I have not in the past uninlaterally closed things. Proposing is as far as I go by myself. I suppose I could revisit that decision, though. Is that what you're advocating? ++Lar: t/c 15:17, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

And I think your lack of a pair unwillingness to not take deliberate action when it's obvious what action is right is not helpful. You are apparently unwilling to actually do something, so what's the point of you being here? You're not adminning in the area - you're using magic discussion powers in the magic "no-plebians" section. You're using your admin powers as a supervote, which you don't have. It's such a patently obvious close that your unwillingness to just do it is an embarassment. Hipocrite (talk) 15:23, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

You can't have it both ways. You cannot promote an RfC that is trying to remove me entirely (for the crime of having an opinion) and at the same time castigate me for not taking action (instead of just voicing my opinion about what the correct action is). You want this closed now? OK. I'll close it now, as I suggested it be closed, without further consultation. Let's see how that works. ++Lar: t/c 15:30, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Result concerning ATren

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators and is not to be used to conduct discusson or debate. Comments by non-admins, and any discussion or debate by other than uninvolved admins, will be moved to the section above.

• Proposed close: ATren is admonished to adhere to the high standards of civility we expect of all contributors, regardless of whether these standards are actually enforced against others or not. The misbehavior of others is not justification for one's own misbehavior. Regardless of how egregious that misbehavior of others might be. No other action taken. ++Lar: t/c 13:40, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

enacted. ++Lar: t/c 15:38, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Attention: This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.

Request concerning marknutley

User requesting enforcement

Hipocrite (talk) 17:21, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

User against whom enforcement is requested

marknutley (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Sanction or remedy that this user violated

Misplaced Pages:General sanctions/Climate change probation

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

1. Adds ref to "www.theregister.co.uk," adds ref to "rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com"
2. Adds ref to "climateaudit.org"

Diffs of notifications or of prior warnings against the conduct objected to (if required)

Per Misplaced Pages:General_sanctions/Climate_change_probation/Requests_for_enforcement/Archive7#William_M._Connolley_.28and_Marknutley.29 "Marknutley is prohibited from introducing a new source, with some exceptions such as articles published in peer-reviewed journals, books published by a well-regarded academic press, or newspaper articles published in the mainstream media, to any biography of a living person or any climate change article without first clearing the source with another long-term contributor in good standing."

Enforcement action requested (block, topic ban or other sanction)

Indefinite, wiki-wide ban on adding any new sources to articles. Marknutley is permitted to suggest sources on talk pages, and edit articles to conform to already existing sources.

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

He was prohibited from doing the behavior, yet he did the behavior. When confronted about the behavior, he stated "The register is a main stream newspaper is`nt it? And Pileke is reliable per wp:prof so i figured that would be ok to use". The Register is a website, and blogs that are reliable are not one of the exemptions presented. If Marknutley cannot abide by a narrowly construed prohibition, the prohibition must be more broadly construed.

As demonstrated by his response, he doesn't get it. He's prohibited from doing X - regardless of if X is acceptable under other policies or guidlines. He does X. This is not acceptable behavior. Hipocrite (talk) 18:17, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Discussion concerning marknutley

Statement by marknutley

Andrew Orlowski writing in The Register is reliable if attributed, which is what i did . Same for Roger A. Pielke, Jr. who passes wp:prof and again the same for Steve McIntyre who strangly hipocrite has left in. There is nothing wrong with what i did here all the sorces are fine and attributed correctly mark nutley (talk) 18:11, 19 May 2010 (UTC) Further, yes i made a mistake in saying wp:prof It is wp:sps i should have quoted. It says, Self-published material may in some circumstances be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications That covers both Pielke and McIntyre. Orlowski and the register is used as a ref in loads of articles, which is why i correctly assume it is ok to use if Attributed, which it was. mark nutley (talk) 18:34, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Also, i would like to say, i would have self reverted if given the chance, kim posted on my talk page and i asked him to clarify, within half an hour (i was having dinner) Hipocrite had reverted the content and filed this RFE. I have seen the register used as a source in plenty of articles and assume it is ok to use, the same with academics who are ok to use as wp:sps. If i have broken my sanction it was unintentional and i will ensure that i will double check anything not from a part of the MSM with other editors. I also apologize for once again wasting everyones time mark nutley (talk) 19:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments by others about the request concerning marknutley

Statement by ScottyBerg

I've had a few minor interactions with Mark and found him generally to be a pleasant chap. But his handling of this has been discouraging. This is not rocket science. On the talk page he cited WP:PROF, which is not the correct policy. When I pointed that out to him, he questioned my motives. Now I see that he is not supposed to be introducing new sources even if perfectly valid except under limited circumstances. I'm afraid the relief requested by Hipocrite seems warranted. ScottyBerg (talk) 18:28, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Your correct it was wp:sps i should have cited, i did not question your motives btw i said debate with you was pointless as you want the article deleted regardless of how notable it is, sorry if you think i was impugning you mark nutley (talk) 18:35, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments like that aren't at all helpful, Mark. ScottyBerg (talk) 19:45, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Statement by NuclearWarfare about The Wordsmith's proposed closure

When I first proposed the existing sanction, the reason I limited it to biographies of living persons and CC articles was not because I felt applying it to all pages would be too far-reaching. I did not believe that administrators under the current site culture have the ability to implement such a sanction (especially because WP:DSN never attained consensus). To work around that, I applied two existing sanctions, the climate change probation and WP:BLPSE, to ensure that as great a proportion of MN's edits as possible were covered under my action. That said, I think that your sanction extension is a good idea, and should be enacted. NW (Talk) 19:56, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Result concerning marknutley

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators and is not to be used by others to conduct discusson or debate. Comments by non-admins, and any discussion or debate by other than uninvolved administrators, will be moved to the section above. Adminstrators engaged in extended discussion or debate, especially if not directly related to the proposed outcome, should strongly consider using the above sections.

There is disagreement as to the acceptability of any threaded discussions in this section. Please see Template_talk:Climate_Sanction_enforcement_request before engaging in any threaded discussions.

• This seems fairly clear-cut. However, I think Hipocrite's requested sanction may be a bit too far-reaching if it applies to all articles. Therefore I propose the following resolution:
  • Marknutley is prohibited from introducing a new source to any biography of a living person or any climate change article without first clearing the source with another long-term contributor in good standing. The Wordsmith 19:38, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
• Endorse. I don't think Mark is doing it on purpose but I do think he doesn't quite get the distinction. This restriction could be lifted if he posts a solid track record of approvals showing he does get it (with some practice and guidance). ++Lar: t/c 02:35, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Note: I meant lifted "upon application and review" rather than just unilaterally, we need to see a good track record first. ++Lar: t/c 14:13, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

• Endorse as well. I also echo the comments by NW about the scope of this probation, we could not impose restrictions on all articles. Cenarium (talk) 04:25, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
• Concur. I presume Cla68 is still willing to mentor Mark nutley, so using his good offices for all instances should suffice. LessHeard vanU (talk) 08:29, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I call for a close. Several uninvolved admins in favor and no dissenting views. ++Lar: t/c 20:35, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

TW closed the case against me above with William M. Connolley (talk · contribs) is prohibited from editing the article Fred Singer. There is no consensus for this close. The majority of admins commenting opposed this close. Even those most strongly in favour of the ban - Lar and LHVU - agree there is no consensus. Indeed, even TW admits there is no consensus William M. Connolley (talk) 17:45, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Why are you asking for this, it should come from someone uninvolved. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 03:59, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

As the account effected I think this is a valid request by WMC - also noting the original request was not closed when this was initiated and might have easily been a subsection of that matter. Keeping it separate does make it easier to navigate. LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:13, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Is there reason to believe that your editing of this article will improve and that you will address the concerns raised satisfactorily? Would you consider a voluntary withdrawal to just the talk for some period? I'd be inclined to argue more strenuously that the close ought to be undone in either of those cases, all else being equal. ++Lar: t/c 18:14, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Is there any indications that any of WMC's edits where in violation of policy? (and do please be specific) I've looked through the case above, and i haven't been able to see anyone argue this. Sanctions are supposed to be for violations of policy - not because people want to "level the playing field". --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:57, 21 May 2010 (UTC) Clarify: The usage of "level the playing field" is not directed at Lar (although it is one his phrases (its a good one)) - but to the discussion in general. Iff there is no policy violation, then the saction is problematic, and a "meeting in the middle" based on a faulty premise. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 20:13, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

KDP: Yes, there is. But my question was directed to WMC. I would like an answer. From him. See LHvU's remarks, below. ++Lar: t/c 20:28, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

William M. Connolley (talk) 21:15, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Well that answers half of what I asked. What about the other (arguably more important) half? ++Lar: t/c 21:43, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

@Lar, there was a reason that i asked for specifics. There were lots of insinuations and allusions in the case about inappropriate edits - but none of the links/evidence actually showed policy violations. It is for instance not a policy violation to add a POV flag, it is also not a policy violation to add citation needed tags (and despite what SV stated, the cn's were added to things that weren't reliably sourced anywhere in the article), and WMC did explain/rationalize on the talk-page (w/o response from SV). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 21:52, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

And there is a reason I asked WMC the questions I asked, rather than asking you on his behalf. I believe if he answers honestly you will have the answer you seek as well, in spirit if not in the form you necessarily wish it. ++Lar: t/c 22:18, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually you are basing your three questions on faulty logic: #1 assumes facts not in evidence - and thus becomes a "have you stopped beating your wife" question, #2 is based on the assumption that #1 is correct, #3 is based on #2. So everything hinges on #1 which is an assumption that i've asked you to specify - which, i note, you still haven't. WMC will be damned if he answers to your satisfaction (a), and damned if he doesn't (b)--Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:12, 21 May 2010 (UTC) (a) because then he must have done something in breach of policy (b) because then he won't admit he's done something in breach of policy. --- in other words: No matter how he answers, he must have broken policy. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:16, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

It's fairly amazing how WMC has so many flappers that turn up whenever he's been asked a simple direct question or two. Your analysis is wrong, and beside the point as well. WMC can answer, or dodge. Which is an answer too. ++Lar: t/c 23:47, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

May i ask you to retract your personal attack here? I'm not a "flapper" (whatever that is - because its certainly can't be Flapper) for WMC nor anyone else. And may i remind you that you have also been asked a very simple direct question - and haven't answered it. Nor have you explained how my analysis is wrong - just asserted something. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:10, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

See Flapper (disambiguation): A term from Gulliver's Travels for someone who stands between a popular or powerful person with many demands on his time and many of those people who want to talk with such a person, filtering what messages are allowed to pass You're filtering. WMC can answer, or evade, without your assistance. Although while you're here, his evasion isn't quite so obvious. ++Lar: t/c 00:24, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not giving assistance. I'm asking a question - which you've so far evaded. And i am not amused by your personal attacks on me as a person - or rather the assumption that i'm not "a person" - but rather a marionette. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:27, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

WMC can answer, or evade, without your interference in the thread. ++Lar: t/c 00:42, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

The Wordsmith contends that consensus existed for the block; I suggest that others are not so convinced it was apparent. The Wordsmith references the more stringent application of policy toward BLP's as the major part of the rationale, although this does not appear to be as relevant in the Request made by SlimVirgin (referencing edit warring as the triggering factor) as it may have been in the past - and that has been contested, also - which specified adding the term "global warming" skeptic (since accepted) and re-adding a pov template. Further comments regarding the edits made by WMC to both the article and various talkpages regarding same since SV began editing have exampled alleged WP:BATTLE mentality and WP:CIVIL violations as well as edit warring - however the question of possible BLP violations are of some age ago, and have been gone from the article for a little while before the current matter erupted. While I am of the known opinion that Dr Connolley has not altered his preferred manner of expressing his viewpoints, method of interacting with editors he disagrees with, attempts to place a pov upon subjects relating to AGW skeptisism while endeavouring to exclude those contrary to his viewpoint, I cannot agree upon the principle of placing a sanction for violations of a historical nature - otherwise there is no incentive for an editor to turn away from such edits and make efforts to edit more collegiately. I do not see the BLP violations in recent edits that would give rise to the current rationale, although I am not too familiar with current practice there and may yet be convinced. Presently, however, I am not content with the basis on which a ban has been enacted. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:02, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

• Grant appeal, and maybe impose the sanction I proposed initially, ie a restriction on editing this article, per my comments , . TW's evidence was mostly edits from 2008, 2009, before the beginning of this probation so can't be used to impose sanctions as per the probation terms, as for invoking BLPSE, WMC's recent edits have been discussed on the talk page and BLPN, and there were no consensus that they were BLP violations, one admin's opinion can't substitute to that. There were no disruptive edits supporting an article ban. Cenarium (talk) 20:05, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
• Revoke sanction and start a new thread to re-examine the initial complaint. (Cenarium: My belief is that sanctions should not be passed in an appeal thread.) AGK 14:26, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

  Agreed. Cenarium (talk) 14:39, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

  Concur. LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:56, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

(added after the close) I'm fine with the close/overturn (I note apparent consensus for it, although I do not myself agree) but I want to go on record that these questions remain mostly unanswered. Repeated for convenience:

Is there reason to believe that your editing of this article will improve and that you will address the concerns raised satisfactorily? Would you consider a voluntary withdrawal to just the talk for some period? I'd be inclined to argue more strenuously that the close ought to be undone in either of those cases, all else being equal. ++Lar: t/c 18:14, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

WMC answered one, indirectly, with this post

William M. Connolley (talk) 21:15, 21 May 2010 (UTC) which I interpret to mean "no, he would not consider a voluntary withdrawal".

The rest remain unanswered. ++Lar: t/c 15:53, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Fairly clear they won't be any time soon... move into the hat. ++Lar: t/c 02:57, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Revisiting discussion that was ongoing at time of The Wordsmith banning WMC from the Fred Singer article with a view to swiftly moving to consensus. Relevant diffs and supporting arguments have been already made in previous discussions, so I am suggesting we deal primarily with how we resolve this issue. LessHeard vanU (talk) 15:46, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Move the whole discussion to a community thread that deals with WMC's clear, citable conflict of interest against the climate change BLP articles and request a restriction that WMC is restricted from editing all such BLP articles. Climate change activists that have been involved in multiple issues at multiple BLP articles of his clear, citable opponents should not be allowed to continue editing any such BLP articles. It is not the revoking of this restriction that is worthy of discussion but its expansion. Off2riorob (talk) 14:50, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Your suggestion does not address the matter of WMC's appeal. There is nothing to stop you from addressing the issue of WMC's editing of BLP's relating to subjects involved in CC/AGW in a RfC or similar - but you will realise that most if not all of the uninvolved admins will not feel able to participate, less it prejudices their activity here. It may also disallow admins who do comment from getting involved in Probation enforcement requests. You may wish to consider these points. LessHeard vanU (talk) 15:09, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

As an uninvolved admin seeing the ruckus over the restrictions on WMC, I reviewed his recent edits and see many problems with his contributions. I barely scratched the surface with my review, but found so many that I stopped to give my initial impression that sanctions against him are indeed appropriate. (Link to sandbox with full comments instead of diffs)

• Uncollabartive editing and ownership problems including harsh and aggressive comments about other editors good faith contributions.

• Trying to derail independent and uninvolved editors from comments on the article by calling an editor attempt to gather more opinions about an issue at BLPN "forums shopping" ;

• snide remarks and commentary about other editors contributions "As G says, this is deeply ironic coming from you.", "Forum-shopping to BLPN is unacceptable", labeling other editors edits as "whitewashing"- , , labeling other editors edits as "dishonest spin", derogatory edit summary and comment to sanctioning admin "waste of time"; add comments to the wrong section of a page and when remove he reverted with a uncivil edit summary "don't be lazy"; "malice" and "trolling" removed Further Reading section of article and called it "spam", , , edit summary that reverted content during a group collaborative rewrite of an article "this is rubbish.",

• A constant flow of criticism injected into discussions that escalates the tension between contributors. Taken in isolation any one comment would not necessarily be problematic but high volume of WMC's contributions to these discussions sets up a negative tone that makes collaborative editing impossible. - with edit summary "don't derail the discussion please",

• Selective removal of good faith comments from long established user who are attempting to have dialog with him or notify him per usual protocol. with edit summary "its OK, someone else attacking me just isn't news", (no edit summary),

Recommendation:

• Because of the long standing nature of the problem, I recommend a lengthy full topic ban from all CC articles. Until consensus for this restriction can be formed, an immediate full topic ban of the Fred Singer article and talk page discussions needs to be in place.

I'm leaving for a trip out of town and will not be able to expand on this for a long time so do with it as you all like. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 15:11, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

If it helps, here is a chronologically ordered list of links to all of the enforcement requests brought against WMC over the course of this probation, excluding those from this, the most recent page. (Just a note: a couple of the requests were closed on grounds other than their actionability.) I've written out their number to make clicking them easier:

one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.--Heyitspeter (talk) 22:28, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment Full topic bans such as the one just proposed are rarely instituted on the basis of a short review of edits of this kind. If there is any evidence that problematic content is being consistently added to CC articles by Wiliam M. Connelley, FloNight should have taken the time to document that. If she is ignoring the content he is adding, she should similarly explain why she has done so. Mathsci (talk) 15:37, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

That seems more like a procedural objection than a substantive one. Do you disagree with the characterization? ++Lar: t/c 15:49, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that the analysis of such comments does depend on the context, which is not always so obvious. Mathsci (talk) 16:10, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, certainly true, but nevertheless: Do you disagree with the characterization? ++Lar: t/c 21:34, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

1) The diffs contain at least one article revert with the edit summary "rubbish". And I know from reading the talk page that he did more problematic edits to articles but time is short for me to locate them all. I'm confident of my review and my conclusion. And encourage others to look for more.

2) Are you suggesting that we ban WMC from talk pages but not the articles? That would make no sense at all. His rudeness and obstruction against good faith editors is harming the editing environment to the point that no impartial editor is able to work the topic. These articles can get along just fine without his contributions. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 15:52, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't think I'm suggesting any kind of ban at the moment. In British english "rubbish" is not considered particularly rude. I suppose it must be like Bishonen saying "Now shoo!" On the other hand, I am aware that on wikipedia careless words like that can assuming alarming proportions :) Mathsci (talk) 16:10, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

All of the cited edits are to talk pages or to one biography. I am confused as to why, even assuming arguendo the accuracy of the conclusions drawn from these diffs, they would result in a topic wide ban. Hipocrite (talk) 15:46, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

How much evidence would be necessary? ++Lar: t/c 15:49, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd want evidence that showed that it was relevant to ban him from every conceivably sub-category of article under the probation. For instance, this prohibits him from editing articles about the Science of Global Warming - it also bans him from biographies of mainstream scientists. If you want to ban him from those sub-topics, you need to show more than editing on one bio and some talk pages.

Further, I have filed a wikiquitte alert about your personal attacks which you cannot retract as they were in an edit summary. You are directed to call me "Hipocrite," "H," or "Hip" in edit summaries when you feel the need to reference me. Hipocrite (talk) 15:52, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Hipocrite, my immediate recommendation is for a full topic ban on the Fred Singer article and my diffs do strongly support that recommendation. My diffs also include other talk page comments that show that WMC is not able to work in this highly contentious area. I only reviewed back several weeks today, but know that there are more because many of the people involved in this situation has a talk page on my watchlist and I'm aware of the longstanding nature of WMC's conflict in this area and his constant brushups with other editors. It is a constant time sink and needs to be stopped so that productive editing can happen. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 16:00, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

The "Fred Singer article" is not a topic, it's an article. Please be clear as to exactly what you're proposing - thanks. Further, I suggest that if you are proposing broad topic bans based on "a constant time sink and needs to be stopped," there is a long list of editors, including myself, that I have suggested be broadly topic banned from the entire area. If you are willing to broadly topic ban people based on "a constant time sink and needs to be stopped so that productive editing can happen," I suggest that you request my long list of individuals who need topic bans and implement said bans without further discussion or comment, and see what happens. Hipocrite (talk) 16:09, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I fully support the comments from Flo and although he has only referenced recent issues there are clear and repeated similar long term issues and similar edit patterns from WMC and a restriction from all BLP articles related to his well known position as a climate change activist and regarding his citable opponents is needed to protect living people. Off2riorob (talk) 16:02, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

You make a number of factual assertions. I'd like to focus on one. You write "his well known position as a climate change activist." You are, of course, aware that this page is subject to restrictions based on WP:BLP, so you would never include counterfactual information about an identifiable living person on it. As such, please present evidence that WMC is a "climate change activist," or I will remove your uncited defamatory information about a living person and seek that you be prevented from further such actions. Hipocrite (talk) 16:16, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

One option in good faith for WMC would be to voluntarily cease editing the BLP articles of such living people with whom he has a citable conflict of interest with. Off2riorob (talk) 16:02, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

You have made another uncited defamatory statement against an identifiable living person. Stop now. There is no evidence that WMC has a "Conflict of interest," as opposed to "A disagreement about science," with any individual you are insinuating. Hipocrite (talk) 16:14, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

He has got a blog that repeated discusses exactly this issue. Off2riorob (talk) 16:17, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

So do a lot of people. Are you suggesting we ban everyone who has a blog and has discussed a topic from editing on that topic? How does having a blog give someone a "conflict of interest," in the way I have a conflict of interest with respect to the company that pays my salary? Hipocrite (talk) 16:21, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

No they don't, the fact that WMC is so well known and has his blog is extremely unusual amongst editors, also you should consider allowing people the respect and opportunity of standing up for themselves. Off2riorob (talk) 16:24, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, you'd be surprised how many editors involved here on the "skeptical" side of things do, in fact, have blogs, closed and open wikis and mailing lists that are used to direct other skeptics to specific Misplaced Pages disputes. I'm waiting for the big fat arbcom case to dump my archives. meatball:DefendEachOther. Hipocrite (talk) 16:31, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

To answer Hipocrite question about exactly what I recommend and other comment 1) I want to stop him from editing anywhere about Fred Singer, the article, article talk page, and any other place that discussion is occurring on site about this person. 2) The focus is on WMC now, and I'm soley addressing his problematic contributions to this topic. Additionally in a separate way, other editors with problematic contributions can be discussed. I do not want this discussion to get sidetracked with laterial topics about procedure and other editors. We need to address the core issue here and now to contain the problem with WMC contributions. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 16:26, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

• I support an article ban for WMC on Fred Singer, as previously argued. However, to expedite this matter I would be content to see placed a 0RR restriction on WMC on the article page - where another editor may revert back a removal of content added by WMC, and therefore taking ownership of that material, and WMC may not revert another contributors edit - and a zero incivility tolerance on the talkpage. The 0RR should be not less than 3 months. WMC is very likely to note FloNight's comments above, and while I believe that they exceed the remit of the request that initiated this matter I think they might be revisited in the next instance of WMC being found to be in violation of policy within a BLP or indeed elsewhere in the Probation area. LessHeard vanU (talk) 16:16, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
  • I'm not too keen on the idea that a dozen or more people will be back here again this week debating over whether WMC's comment on a talk page is uncivil. IMO, he has worn out his chance(S) to edit the Fred Singer article collaboratively. I don't see any way that he can return to that article and not have it cause disputes between himself and other editors. In this instance we need to think about what is in the best interest of the FS article and other editors. The issue is not really about WMC. I'm hoping that more impartial editors will come there to edit if he is banned from it. I fear that they will leave and others will not come to replace them if he continues to edit FS. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 16:55, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
    • I don't have an opinion on banning Connelly from Singer. I don't like what I see, particularly in the debate over "retired." Einstein retired from Princeton ten years before his death and I doubt anyone called him a "retired" scientist. However, I think the problem here is cultural. In academia, open discussion is the norm, restrictions on discussion are disfavored, and sometimes discussions become heated. There seems to be a general consensus that expert opinion on this general subject to be encouraged. Is it absolutely nece ssary to ban Connelly from any kind of interaction on this page? ScottyBerg (talk) 17:06, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
• (A uninvolved admin) I can't blame WMC for saying that he won't waste his time appealing to an admin who didn't even notify this board of the sanction he took, showed disrespect to me on IRC and since that didn't further discuss it here; plus that edit summary was not derogatory (though I'm not entirely sure to which you referred). On the talk page, I asked as well that the discussion being kept to the procedural point raised, I don't see what's wrong with that. Certainly, WMC's interactions with others are often lacking, but that is the case for multiple editors in the CC area, it has been the case recently wrt to this article, but I don't see a basis for a ban in that, a restriction yes, but not a ban at this point. Sanctions ought to be based on evidence rather than on allegations, and the later prevails massively. Moreover this is CC probation enforcement and the procedure for it should be respected, there's no reason we should respect it for other editors but not WMC. This request should be correctly formatted, for example. Cenarium (talk) 17:13, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

• (I did reconsider re-opening the old discussion, but that would have entailed me reposting FloNight and Off2riorob's comments in the appropriate section, and then other commentators being only permitted in "their section" - and it was getting rather unwieldy as it was. I am still hoping for a consensus to quickly form from the previous discussion and that added here. If it starts to get bogged down under further disputation of the diffs, etc. then we might just open a "straw poll" of the uninvolved admins and act upon the consensus found there? LessHeard vanU (talk) 18:57, 22 May 2010 (UTC))

• Of great importance to any evaluation of the merits of WMC's contributions to this topic area is an assessment of such changes as this. Are such disputed aspects of the article the subject of wide disagreement? Does WMC's positions in such disputes have merit? Is he a reasonable contributor or a POV-pusher; and if the first, is his conduct nonetheless unsound? I would ask William himself to directly rebut any diffs that are cited as evidence of poor conduct on his part, and to also consider making a general statement. A subject-wide topic ban of moderate length is certainly on the cards here. AGK 17:42, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Do you feel that diff is problematic? Because I'm not seeing an issue with it. NW (Talk) 17:47, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
    • That depends on whether it is a verified fact. I gather that some question WMC's neutrality with respect to climate change, so I'm trying to ascertain whether there is a problem with his approach to editing as well as whether there is a problem with his method of interaction. To be clear, my questions are directed at any edit of WMC's that is cited in this thread, and not just at that particular edit; I'm trying to get up to speed on the bigger picture here, being new to this topic. AGK 17:53, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
      • Definitely a verifiable fact AGK. It's one of the main reasons Singer is notable. If you want, I could give you a pile of refs, though I don't think this page is the place to make the case. Guettarda (talk) 18:16, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
      • (edit conflict) The fact that he is a global warming skeptic is not disputed by anyone. His status as a professor was discussed at Talk:Fred Singer#professor emeritus before WMC made that edit. NW (Talk) 18:17, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
        • And as for his other edits to this topic? Is his approach to article content at all problematic, or are we here dealing with a complaint solely concerning WMC's approach to interaction with others? AGK 18:26, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
          • Using the term "retired" was disputed, but I believe that is an editorial decision that people can, in good faith, disagree on. After all, he is retired. I thought it was appropriate, others thought it was not. Content disagreements are acceptable. Guettarda (talk) 18:39, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
          • Oh, n/m, I see NW already answered that question. Other edits that have been raised here are from 2008 and 2009, and I don't think they are germane. Guettarda (talk) 18:41, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
          • WMC has a strong opinion on AGW. However, this opinion is completely in line with the scientific mainstream, and quite likely the result of the fact that he worked as a scientist and a climate modeller with the BAS. I have yet to see him make an edit that is factually incorrect, either on the science or on protagonists in the field. As a result of his strong defence of the scientific opinion on climate change he has become the target of an off-wiki smear campaign in which some Misplaced Pages editors are happy to participate (Connoleywatch: "WMC is a fraudster ... perpetuating the propaganda ... The unabashed truth of this monster will be revealed. Welcome to your nightmare Connolley.", Whatsupwiththat, one of the more "high-tone" of the sceptic blogs, , , Another WUWT, with comment by someone called TheGoodLocust claiming "Correct, he finally got booted off his own article and now relegates cleaning duty to two of his biggest lackeys – Stephan Schulz and Kim Dabelstein Petersen", Misplaced Pages Watch, with "thegoodlocust" and what seems to be banned GoRight). Given the amount of organised hostility directed at him, I think he has stayed remarkably sane. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:14, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
            • The diffs that I added show that long time established editors that came to the Fred Singer article to improve it and expand it were met with hostility by WMC. Having new blood on CC related articles is exactly what is needed, and his abrasive comments, and aggressive article editing is impeding their participation. WMC needs to stay off of articles where he is not able to discuss content without getting overheated. Since he will not do that voluntarily, then editing restrictions need to be given. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 20:07, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
              • Flo, as you well know, "established editors" have no special rights in Misplaced Pages. In fact, we expect more of established editors. When an established editor shows up at a contentious article and adds poor quality content, we shouldn't give them special treatment. (Content redacted. Keep comments on-topic please.). Guettarda (talk) 20:24, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
                • • Guettarda: I've removed part of your comment. Please focus only on the topic at hand. If you want to complaint about the conduct of another editor, start a new thread. AGK 20:33, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
                    • Sorry about that - I was trying to carve a path between overly vague platitudes and an overly detailed answer. My point was that WMC's response was not disproportionate. Guettarda (talk) 20:40, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
                    • Guettarda, my comment was a direct response to Stephan Schulz's comment. I was correcting his perhaps mistaken thinking that my diffs were WMC's response to organized outside campaigns that flooded this article. Of course all editors newbies and long established editors need to work collaboratively with each other. Other editors problematic contributions can be addressed, too. But WMC contributions related to Fred Singer's article are too frequently problematic to ignore any longer. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 21:05, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
                      • Sorry, but either my writing was unclear, or your reading muddled (or both). I did not claim what you think I did. I was offering two observations: One, that WMCs edit on the content are, in my observation, never factually incorrect (although there may be some other problems with a small percentage of them), and two, that there is an explanation for the sometimes less than collegial general atmosphere in the CC articles and around William in particular. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:33, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Flo, There are quite a few things in what you say which are not universely believed, how obvious they may seem to you. "Overheated" "exactly what is needed" etc. are very subjective judgements. --BozMo talk 20:28, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

My job as an admin is to apply restrictions that are set through policy. I've been around long enough to understand dispute resolution, pertinent policies, and community standards for applying them. Although judgments may vary, I don't think I far off the mark here. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 21:05, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Which particular long term editors is FloNight referring to? What particular reason does she have for thinking their contributions were justified? Simply because she knows them as "a long term editor"? I am confused by her statements, because one moment she talks about conduct and the next about content. That is not very helpful. Mathsci (talk) 20:42, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

• • • • I'm willing to submit that no impartial biography would ever introduce someone in terms of a controversial position they hold unless that is the original, or more likely the only, source of their notability. I would further submit that no one interested in the treatment of BLPs could possibly miss this point, or if they did, that they should nevertheless stay away from such articles. Mackan79 (talk) 02:30, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

• I have been asked to comment here by several people on my user talkpage. I apologize for not being more quick to respond, but I often have to work awkward hours and paying my bills is more important than Misplaced Pages. I have been watching these discussions from my phone, but the browser is terrible for editing so I don't do it on my mobile. I do believe that the ban from the Singer article was necessary to prevent further harm to the subject, so I took bold and decisive action to make it happen. Many complaints against WMC are legitimate, but the battle lines are clearly drawn and the pro-WMC and the anti-WMC editors can hardly ever reach a consensus. Therefore, I did what I felt was best for the encyclopedia, as I was empowered to do so by the general sanction statement, which only requires one uninvolved admin to act. There is a difference between acting outside of consensus, and acting against consensus. Several people have brought up the fact that many of the diffs were before the probation; I freely admit this. While the 2010 diffs might not have been enough for a ban, when the others are added a clear pattern emerges. That they are spread out over three consecutive years is a strong indication that if WMC is allowed to edit this article, BLP problems will continue. I see that the ban has since been reverted. I stand by my actions, and firmly believe that WMC demonstrates a persistent inability to edit this article in keeping with our policies. The Wordsmith 18:18, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
  • Here is the WP:AGF interpretation: There are no recent problematic edits because WMC has indeed improved his editing. As a reward for that you now propose to ban him based on older behaviour (much of which, btw, happened under a very different state of our evolving BLP community standard). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:36, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

So we have two new uninvolved admins who have arrived with more or less diametrically opposed views and we are a little uncomfortable with a possibly non-consensus ban. I move we close with changing to a one month topic ban on Singer plus talk page and all go out to enjoy the good weather. Life is just too short for too much more of this discussion. --BozMo talk 20:32, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

If we don't come to a more satisfactory conclusion then was reached in the twelve or so other enforcement requests brought against WMC in this forum, we'll be spending a lot more time talking about him in the future. It's worth spending time on this. (Also, it's raining where I am. Keep me occupied!)--Heyitspeter (talk) 22:34, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Working on this article would probably be infinitely more enjoyable ;). AGK 23:43, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Hahaha yeah. I can't even look at Climatic Research Unit documents controversy anymore. It's too painful to watch it purposefully and carefully sabotage by those I once expected would be the least likely to do so. As I transition back into editing other articles I realize I'd forgotten how fun editing Misplaced Pages can be.--Heyitspeter (talk) 23:59, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Some responses

Some responses from me. I'll start with AGK's diff, because it is so easy to rebut; well, people have already done so (thank you) but I want to comment on it, becauase it is so bizarre that the discussion has got to a point where it could be considered problematic, let alone sanctionable. I think the fact that diff could be considered killer evidence makes it clear how far the anti-WMC tirade has ramped. The diff is and the substance is, a global warming skeptic, retired American atmospheric physicist (bold added). That he is a GW skeptic is doubted by no-one, including Singer. It was in the version that Bozmo protected so presumably can't be too bad. As to the word retired: well, I agree that it is arguable. We have a RS calling him retired , but there are shades of opinion on that; perhaps AP's don't retire, just fade away. Which makes it an issue that should be discussed on the talk page; it very clearly isn't sanctionable; nor a BLP issue. William M. Connolley (talk) 21:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Continuing (starting from the bottom of Flonight's diffs): and are hard to understand. Since when has removing unwelomce comments from a users talk page been sanctionable? And (to be frank) since when have attacks on me been news? William M. Connolley (talk) 21:26, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

The issue is that you come across as unapproachable for collaborative discussion. Removing talk page comments alone would not be a big problem. But it part of a pattern that emerges when all of your contributions are reviewed. Editors working in contentious areas need to use the best practices in order to reach consensus with people that have differing views. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 21:33, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Neither of those comments was an attempt at a collaborative discussion. One, indeed, was simply a notification of an edit elsewhere: simply removing such an edit once read is entirely commonplace. The fact that you bring up such a harmless diff as a sanctionable offence seems indicative more of your attitude than mine William M. Connolley (talk) 21:41, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Face up, WMC. You've been found guilty. All that remains to be done is to gather the evidence. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:37, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

don't derail the discussion . Another odd one. Look at the section - it is about quite an important question: Sanctions, especially bans or blocks, should not be based on edits made before the beginning of this probation?. If you look at the discussion of the Fred Singer question, above; or indeed TW's close (my talk page) you'll repeatedly see old edits brought up (in fact I suspect you've done the same, never mind, I'll get to that). I think I should be shown some credit for starting an explicit debate on this important matter, which needed clarifying. But (alas, as so many of these things do) it showed signs of degenerating in to the usual, instead of focussing on the question at hand. Hence my comment William M. Connolley (talk) 21:41, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

WMC: You misunderstood me. I asked for opinions on your wider editing, with respect to your general approach to article content (are you a POV warrior? do you have any biases in relation to global warming that are manifested in your edits?) as well as with respect to your style of collaboration (are you a dick or not? do you bite? are you open to compromise and are you approachable?). I picked that diff at random from FloNight's statement. Though I guess I can't fault you for rebutting it, because that's what I asked you to do with any edit that was cited as evidence against you :). AGK 21:44, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, OK, fine. I may be a bit touchy at the moment for some unaccountable reason William M. Connolley (talk) 22:07, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Next section: apparently, telling TW that I wouldn't waste my time appealling to him is bad. Arbcomm (WMC vs Giano, oddly enough) decided that even gross incivilty against a blocking admin is not sanctionable. By comparison, my assertion that TW was unlikely to be worth appealing to (a view fully borne out by subsequent events) seems quite harmless. Deeply ironic : indeed, it would be: SV has been notable in the course of this dispute for *not* trying to discuss matters on talk but escalating them off to probation. Also note how that comment continues in a perfectly reasonable attempt to discuss the issues at hand; and further note how SV has, indeed, failed to follow up and discuss these issues. So I think my assertion of "irony" is fully justified. Whitewash : yes indeed, there is I think no other word for it. Ask anyone (outside the rather odd world of this probation) what Fred Singer is known for and the answer would be: Global Warming Skeptic, or Denier, or whatever you care to call it. Try asking google: SEPP - Science & Environmental Policy Project / Founded by atmospheric physicist and global-warming skeptic S. Fred Singer; press releases, news articles, scientific studies and other materials available. For some slightly odd reason the article now calls him an env skeptic instead; I can't account for that. Don't be lazy : yes indeed. Lar knows the rules: which are, in case you don't Comments by non-admins, and any discussion or debate will be moved to the section above. (my bold). "malice" and "trolling" - sorry; can't see your diff. Which did you mean? Further reading - yes, but you've failed to notice the talk page discussion of this, which explains why: the section was far too long and was being used as a workspace by SV. Dean of climate contrarians - yes, that was indeed rubbish. He is, and is called, no such thing. SV is great at finding refs for things. But since she doesn't understand the subject, she doesn't know when those refs are wrong. In this case, she was jsut quoting, in good faith, something Andy Revkin had said. The problem was, Revkin had just made it up as a fun sound-bite, with no regard for accuracy. Having someone who actually knows the subject can be useful occasionally - did I ever mention that before? William M. Connolley (talk) 22:26, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

@AGK

A says William is quick to revert (a courtesy glance over his most recent contributions, filtered to show only mainspace edits, shows a lot of non-vandalism reversions (note that this corrects an earlier error in which he complained about my rollback, which he now says is flawless. Since we're on the subject, allow me to note that the vast bulk of vandalism correction on the Cl Ch pages that is done by "involved" editors is done by the science-side folk. The "skeptic" side folk rarely if ever trouble themselves with trivia like article maintenance).

• - reverst grammar error.
• - reverts vandalism
• - reverts an anon change to the lowest temperature: as I said in the edit summary, who knows, but not from an anon with no source
• - reverts yet more of the same old tired nonsense from Scibaby. Again, note that the "skeptic" side don't help keep out this banned sockpuppeteer
• - as it says in the edit summary: don't americanise spellings and don't add refs for things already ref'd
• - finally, an interesting one. But explained in edit summary and followed up on talk Talk:Fred_Singer#Dean_of.... Where we seem to have ended up deciding that I was right.
• - removes anon edit that, IMHO, made the opening sentence of the article worse. No great thing, either way, I'm not sure why you consider it to be a problem.
• - an anon changed various numbers with no source. Like I say maybe but no source.

That takes me back to the 15th, which is more than a week ago. Is that "a lot" of reversions? It doesn't look like it. Perhaps AGK could offer some guidance on how many are permitted per day before triggering his bad-boy filter. Nor do any of them look problematic, to me.

But I think it is time to stop playing guessing games; if AGK think my actual reversions are problematic, rather than simply their numeration, I invite him to provide examples William M. Connolley (talk) 08:13, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Too much is being read into my comment that William is quick to revert. But for what little it's worth, by that I meant that William frequently reverts changes he does not agree with (essay courtesy of LHvU, who linked to it above; before now I didn't know that it existed, and have found myself often explaining that concept). Diffs follow, as requested; I did not initially include them because I didn't see a need to evidence a statement like "William reverts a lot" (and it's laughable that he has done so, though me might presume that when I say 'revert' I mean 'edit war').

, (might indeed be a dubious change, but from the edit summary attached to the revert, I'm guessing not), (reverted "per talk", but I see no support on the talk page for the version WMC reverted to; if you're going to flat-reject a change because you don't like it, say so), (as before, this point has been disputed back and forth; there becomes a point when something becomes so heavily disputed that DR or some other change of scenery is needed), (a perfectly sound edit, but included here anyhow), ("I prefer"). There are additional examples of reversions, but most, like , seem to be fine; it is better for us to revert on sight anything that is POVy or that seems inconsistent with applicable sources. This is me going back to ~May 10th, but I guess I've said enough.

Obversely, too little attention is being paid to the rest of my comments by those who have opined on them. William has responded to a small portion of my assertions (to which I have, with this comment, rebutted in turn), but not the others or to my wider point: he doesn't play nice with others. AGK 20:19, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) WMC you are generally careful and accurate when you accuse others but I am not sure you can expect everyone else to live up to your standards. Certainly I think you would be better off not being sharp when the rest of us are a bit terminologically inexact. People are passing around accusations like biscuits with coffee for sure, but for me I would prefer that you stuck to answering the WP:OWN one about FS below and tell us if you are prepared to plead guilty and back off a bit. The rest I think you can ignore until someone actually raises a proposal to ban you from the whole topic and then we will all have to pour over the diffs. --BozMo talk 20:25, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm a bit puzzled over the point that AGK is trying to make. Some of the diffs he cited include straightforward fixes of grammatical errors and the like -- is the point that WMC should never revert anything without extensive discussion? More generally, basing one's judgment on context-free diffs is not always the best approach; note for example that two minutes after your "I prefer" diff he changed it with this. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 20:35, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, I've looked at AGK's diffs and they are, to be quite blunt, rubbish. WMC you are generally careful and accurate when you accuse others but I am not sure you can expect everyone else to live up to your standards is all very well but the level of AGK's stuff is just appalling.

• - Ble has, I'm fairly sure, 7 active slave just like std bluetooth. In fact, it may have fewer - I'm not perfectly sure, I can ask at work tomorrow if you like. But 2 billion is simple vandalism. Which I chose to revert with a humourous edit comment. If AGK would like to ban all humour from wiki for his own personal convenice, I suggest he contact The Authorities.
• I've already done that one, above.
• - this one is worth talking about, because it shows both SV and AGK completely failing to understand what is going on. Singer wasn't always a "skeptic", he was fairly sane in the old days; for example, the 1975 book. So the text that SV added, He is known for his contributions to books about climate skepticism, including The Changing Global Environment (1975) is an error in a BLP. Does she, or AGK, thank me for correcting it? Of course not, I get nothing but stick for it, from people who simply don't know what is going on. And WTF is but I see no support on the talk page for the version WMC reverted to; if you're going to flat-reject a change because you don't like it, say so? See Talk:Fred_Singer#Suboptimal.2C_again. Its not hard to find: those are edits to the talk page that span the article space change. What did you want, a really big banner on the talk page saying "AGK please read this (in a couple of weeks when you decide to show up and be interested)"? William M. Connolley (talk) 21:32, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
• - not even a revert, except in spirit. Actually an attempt at compromise. And again, argued to death: that he is a GWS is acknolwedged by all, I think that even SV has finally admitted this point, which makes her edit warring to exclude it so pointless.
• - yep, explained on talk, of course. Perhaps you failed to notice that, again.
• - again, WTF? Why are you being so partial? You've failed to mention which clearly you ought to have.

I didn't see a need to evidence a statement like "William reverts a lot" (and it's laughable that he has done so, though me might presume that when I say 'revert' I mean 'edit war'). - well, when you said it I presume you meant "reverts a lot and this is bad". If you mean "reverts a lot and this is good" please say so and make yourself clear. Given that it was in a paragraph beginning The problem lies with... I assumed you meant "and this is bad". If "works badly with others" means "objects to baseless accusations" then I can only pleased guilty William M. Connolley (talk) 21:32, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

WMC makes comments that are pragmatic and genuine. But he is also blunt and direct:

• - again, this is a failure of understanding on AGK's part. And again, it is a careless failure, because the whole conversation is there for anyone to read Talk:Little_Ice_Age#Failure_to_understand_.22inherent_variability.22 (in fact the conversation isn't finished and I ought to go over and reply again, and I will, when I've finished wasting my time here; anyone else climatologically literate can also come and help if they like). What we have is a discussion starting up with the not very promising Saying that "inherent variability" is an explanation of the Little Ice Age is idiotic. Nonetheless TS, and I, and various others, reply politely. The conversation continues, with Retran saying If imaging an earth with no external forcing, variations would be due to internal distributions in temperature, eventually coming to equilibrium. This is obviously wrong, if you know the subject. And so the conversation continues, with me explaining stuff. Really, the complaint you *ought* to have here is that wiki isn't a newsgroup: article talk pages aren't the place for experts to explain to people what the subject is about. But that wouldn't fit your "narrative" quite so well, would it?
• - simply Fair Comment. And again, please read the entire comment thread. How many times does someone have to post nonsense before you're allowed to call it nonsense?

Well, that is enough tedium here. I'm off to t:LIA to talk about internal variability William M. Connolley (talk) 21:51, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

@Flo, again

The diffs that I added show that long time established editors that came to the Fred Singer article to improve it and expand it were met with hostility by WMC. - no, you haven't. I've rebutted all your diffs in the para above William M. Connolley (talk) 21:48, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Continuing: forum-shopping : yes indeed; a fairly consistent pattern from SV: she rarely engages in substantive discuss on the actual article talk page, but constantly runs off elsewhere to try to get her way. Presumably the idea is that editors who don't actually know about the issue at hand are more likely to be persuadable by vague generalities William M. Connolley (talk) 21:55, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Responses to WMC by others

WMC, you miss the point again. AGK was concerned about your civility, not your irrelevant content. Who would demand an uninvolved admin to appreciate their content but an owner like you. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 22:32, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh I seeeee... that explains so much: you, like rather too many admins here, consider content irrelevant! William M. Connolley (talk) 22:53, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Why else would we have a problem with your style of interaction, if not because it makes it more difficult to write articles? AGK 23:02, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Because it doesn't. It makes it harder for some people to write *bad* articles, but that is a good thing. Unless you really think that Ble permits 2 billion active slaves? Feel free to correct the article if you think you know better William M. Connolley (talk) 23:13, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Bad behavior leads to bad articles and bad community. Your continued disruptive bad behavior is relevant in this project, the content stays in the article. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 23:20, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

What are you on (or possibly about)? No, the content doesn't stay in, because I removed the 2 billion slaves. But, let us consider your argument: indeed, let us believe it. Then, let us take the example of global warming. This is a good article (and also a Good Article). Therefore, by your logic, there is no bad behaviour from those who have built it. Which, as you'll see from the contribution history, is quite a lot of Me. So: do you believe your own logic? William M. Connolley (talk) 23:36, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I believe owners are an issue for concern. The content is the context that qualifies a complaint here. Other than that, I am indifferent. When you can own your bad behavior, in place of insulting or insinuating others, then you will be better off. I own no content here. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 00:19, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Of course you own no content (neither does anyone else, of course). But in your case, since you contribute no content whatsoever to Cl Ch, you have nothing to "own". It really is that simple William M. Connolley (talk) 09:16, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

(out) WMC, how does this level of irascibility help advance a calm, civil, and collegial discourse? Answer: it doesn't. It is this sort of interplay on the topic talk pages that many find problematic. Thank you for providing a clear example for us. ++Lar: t/c 10:28, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

How do ZP5's contribution help wiki in any way? Answer: not at all. Or indeed, yours William M. Connolley (talk) 21:39, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

New section, discussion continuing

It is important to note that the diffs that I added were a sample of the problematic edits that I saw while doing a quick review of his recent edits.

It would be helpful if other uninvolved admins looked through his contributions as AGK did in order to get an over view of the problem. This is not a limited or narrow problem that recently occurred. There are problems dating back to the start of when CC probation started. WMC, knowing of the topic area article probation, should have been on his best behavior. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 00:19, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I do not think the remit of the Probation allows uninvolved admins to extend their review of a complainee's behaviour in all area's of the articles covered by said probation, on the basis of the request made (i.e. disruption, edit warring, battleground, etc.) at Fred Singer or any other article - and this coming from someone who has noted that practice regarding admin actions has expanded to incorporate consensus gathering - except to example that the behaviour forms part of a pattern or has otherwise been noted or acted upon. Both you and AGK, and previously Lar, have exampled behaviours and issues that are not directly related to the requests where they are noted (and Lar's noting of such issues has resulted in claims of bias and an RfC). There is an RfC in respect of the future role of the probation where such extension of the ability of admins to look into the totality of the conduct of named parties - much like ArbCom can and does - may be proposed, or one of these now uninvolved admins can make a Request under the Probation to review WMC's editing of the CC articles generally (although they would then not be uninvolved for that and any other requests involving WMC in the meantime). Lastly - and I wonder who will gasp and who will laugh - there is the point that the purpose of the Probation is to allow as many people to contribute as possible, within policy, and that includes WMC. We are not really in the business of blocking or banning people if there are othe options to pursue. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:57, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused!! Regularly admins on AN examine an editors contributions and make decision about editing restrictions. Surely, admins that are working in an area already identified as being a hot bed of problems can do the same. My experience working in highly contentious area has shown that editors bringing requests often do a poor job of laying out the underlying concerns. Our job as admin is to fix the actual problems that are harming the community not just those identified by editors in a dispute with an editor. In my experience that means looking at the contributions of the editors to see if the problem is limited or extreme, a long standing problem or recent, a pattern or an occasional misstep. I'm unclear on why doing a more through review of an editor that has multiple complaints filed against him on this page, and in other forms of dispute resolution would against a rule. To your last comment, in my opinion WMC (and other users) are keeping editors away from this topic area because of the abrasive and aggressive way that these articles are edited. So, I have no problems with clearing out all the editors that have been controlling the articles content. WMC is hardly new to dispute resolution so I think that fully addressing issues related to him is certainly appropriate if we are going to get effective results from CC sanctions. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 02:17, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

This discussion is the continuation of a specific issue brought by SlimVirgin relating to edits by WMC to the Fred Singer article. You are addressing the editing ethos of WMC to CC related article and talkpage space. I am saying the latter would be fine within a request made under those terms of reference, where admins might take a different viewpoint from that of the SV/WMC/FS. For example, I would have WMC banned from FS indefinitely yet would argue for the minimal sanctions possible that should effect a change in his method of interacting with other editors over the entire AGW article space - he is a good content editor whose contributions together with others would provide the excellent coverage of subjects that WP aspires to - and I don't think we need to hang that discussion on the FS issue, which I feel might have already been closed. LessHeard vanU (talk) 09:49, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Really we should do here what we would do elsewhere - there is no consensus, even among admins, so close as no consensus with a reminder to all to abide by the rules etc and that if we ever have to revisit the issue it will be bad for all. I personally feel that the easiest path is to enact a pageban on this BLP for WMC, but if consensus can't be established, and there is no current editing problem on the BLP, then there is no danger in closing as no consensus with a pledge to impose severe restrictions if this becomes an ongoing issue, rather than a once a year thing. Weakopedia (talk) 07:11, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

So far, I'm seeing a strong consensus for enforcement of some type on WMC with an immediate full ban for 3 month from FS having the most support. I knew when I proposed the wider CC ban that it would take time to develop consensus so that is the reason that I suggested implementing the FS ban now. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 08:29, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

(comment responding to NW's comment in Uninvolved Admin Straw Poll section)We in the biz call rationalization "the process of constructing a logical justification for a belief, decision, action or lack thereof that was originally arrived at through a different mental process.". Anyone can rationalize anything. Please judge edits, not mental processes.--Heyitspeter (talk) 08:37, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Straw Poll of uninvolved admins regarding consensus for action re WMC

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators and is not to be used to conduct discusson or debate. Comments by non-admins, and any discussion or debate will be moved to the section above.

I am instigating this since it appears we are recycling the same discussion we had in the earlier full request, and I re-opened the discussion with a view to establishing what the consensus that was previously forming was. I also note that one or two sysops are time constrained, and whose preferences may be lost within the discussion so I am going to add them here italicised in case they wish certify or remove them, otherwise they will count toward the consensus. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:12, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

• Article/talkpage ban, not less than 3 months, or, 0RR on article page, zero incivility tolerance on talkpage, indefinitely. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:15, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
• Article/talkpage ban. FloNight (per discussion, added by LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:18, 22 May 2010 (UTC)) Confirm as my strong preference and at least 3 months although editing restricts are needed if he returns to the article. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 21:49, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
• Article/talkpage ban, not less than 3 months with a second choice being 0RR on article page. In either case zero incivility tolerance, wikiwide, indefinitely, with a second choice being zero incivility tolerance on talkpage, indefinitely. ++Lar: t/c 21:32, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
• Undecided, and request (without intended to imply anything at all) that we not begin moving towards actioning this request, one way or another, at this early stage. AGK 21:49, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

• This request originally commenced on 15 May but, yeah, there is no rush - and I would note I am happy with your actions re removing my noting The Wordsmith's earlier comment re sanctions. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:41, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

• When I said 'early stage', I meant relative to when this thread (the 're-visit') was opened. Sorry, I should have made that clear. AGK 23:00, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

• Undecided at the moment. WMC seems able to rationalize the reasons he made what is being referred to as improper/disruptive editing. I would like time for him to allow him to fully build his rebuttal and then enough time for myself and other sysops to analyze it in detail. NW (Talk) 23:48, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I have lost track of this a bit, although the outcome does not shock me. Can someone give me a "Noddy guide" to how we get to a three month article ban on FS? If this probation is going to work modifying behaviour we need to get a bit more "cause and effect" and a bit less iconoclasm. What are we asking him not to do next time, specifically? Otherwise it looks too much like we are bullying the hippy kid with the pony tail (since removed) again... --BozMo talk 15:30, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, since WMC won't answer direct questions about his behavior now (see above) I'd say that perhaps a modification of behavior is too much to ask for. This just removes the source of many problems. If after some time away there is some improvement in introspective ability, or if we see general improvement elsewhere, there is hope. But our policies in general say first try to get improvement from the problematic person and if that fails, remove the problematic person. Given the large number of enforcement requests regarding (many of which at least admonished, if not actually sanctioned) WMC, we may be in "cut our losses" mode. Or ought to be, perhaps. ++Lar: t/c 17:08, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

With respect to the article, it is shown that WMC too obviously displays WP:OWNERSHIP issues and insists upon reverting to "consensus", in which the consensus he refers to is that which he works to main, and places the burden of arguing for a change solely upon the new editor - only noting the need to change consensus and not arguing the validity for retaining the current version. (It is also noted that he does so in a manner that is the antipathy of respect and collegiate working practices, and presents a hostile and intimidating editing environment). Removing WMC for 3 months from being able to edit or discuss the article will allow other contributors the opportunity to develop the subject, establish a consensus built around mutual desire for improvement, and fundamentally allow it to be edited in the manner promoted by Misplaced Pages. 3 months should suffice to establish a fresh consensus for the appearance of the article, which WMC may then wish to address in the appropriate manner. It is possible that it will not have changed overmuch, there being editors sympathetic to WMC's viewpoint who are also apparently more inclined to work collaboratively with contributors who bring differing viewpoints to the table. Removing WMC temporarily from the article space will allow us to see how it will progress without his influence, whether it changes to any great degree, and whether the editing environment improves. Lessons may then be taken which might be applied elsewhere, where the same issues may be present. LessHeard vanU (talk) 18:15, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Clear, thank you. --BozMo talk 19:30, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I have had a weekend to mull this. My view is I agree there is some sort of ownership issue, I think that is partly why intuitively I would like some sort of break from WMC editing FS. However much things were discussed and reached consensus in the past, new editors get new conversation and not a "revert to consensus version" kind of reaction. At the same time I am pretty disappointed at a number of accusations flying around which have not matched up to diffs presented. Making unfounded allegations and being casual on details is at least a very large part of the problem on CC and seeing uninvolved admins doing this makes me pessimistic about ever sorting this stuff out. I would accept a 1 month holiday from FS, with a strong preference for apologies from both sides. --BozMo talk 10:37, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

• I would prefer at least a 6 month ban from the article, but I think 3 months is an acceptable compromise. It needs to be run through with a fine-toothed comb,and having WMC involved would likely make that much more difficult. I'm ambivalent about extending it to the Talkpage, though. His edits to it don't seem to be overtly problematic, so I don't take any official position on that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by The Wordsmith (talk • contribs)
• After mulling it over for the weekend and digging through the diffs presented, I have to say I'm about in the same boat as BozMo, especially when he writes "I am pretty disappointed at a number of accusations flying around which have not matched up to diffs presented". Would prefer voluntary withdrawal by WMC from the Singer article but would not support a ban if he refuses. Strongly oppose any sort of topic-wide ban. I recognize that other administrators might see things differently, but this is simply my conclusion after the analysis of the diffs presented. NW (Talk) 22:34, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure I see that as quite the same boat. Or if it's the same boat, it's not carrying the same cargo. BozMo comes down, in the end, as willing to accept a one month sanction banning WMC from this particular article (most of the rest of us think 3 at least so that's still the consensus I think as of now) while you, in the end, seem to be opposed to any at all. ++Lar: t/c 00:51, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
    • I'd be willing to accept a ban if that were the consensus; I just wouldn't issue it if it were only me making the call. NW (Talk) 02:06, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Are we done here?

I am not closing this one - I closed the original WMC request, and the Appeal, and restarted this discussion. Simply, I am too involved in the process (even to the point of ownership - witness this subsection) to review the poll and make a declaration of consensus. So...? LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:45, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I think we are. We have some less and some more but your original proposal seems to be what consensus centers around. For those who remain unconvinced, a quick peruse of the half dozen or so edits by WMC just prior to mine in the history give a good flavor of his charm and grace. Labeling as "misc twaddle" a section of the very discussion that will determine one's fate... that's breathtakingly abrupt. ++Lar: t/c 22:05, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Though there is no reason why another administrator could not close the discussion and action it one way or another, I will not be doing so because I would prefer that we take a couple more days. A decision at this point, in my opinion, would be hasty (though not unacceptably so). AGK 22:40, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

• Procedural but important point: users who provide evidence cannot reasonably be considered uninvolved admins for the purpose of determining a sanction. Cenarium (talk) 23:44, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure I agree with that as a hard and fast rule. For example one could construe that in my comment just above, I provided evidence but I think that would be rather an enormous stretch. I suggest it not be made. I'll go farther, I'm not sure I agree at all. This isn't arbcom where we have rigid evidentiary rules (and even Arbs sometimes provide diffs). Merely examining and reporting on matters does not make one involved. Editing in the area makes one involved. ++Lar: t/c 00:48, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
    • This particular request is out of hand, but in regular requests the original user making the request, who provides the evidence and requests action, wouldn't act as uninvolved admin in that same request, since admins are then supposed to analyze the evidence and determine which action to take. All is confused here and doesn't seem worth trying to untangle. But if standards are no longer followed then I don't see where this probation will go. Cenarium (talk) 01:38, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

• • This is essentially the third pass through more or less the same request so it's a bit unstructured, yes. We have folk (at the same time) saying it's been open too long and saying it's being closed with undue haste. So go figure. ++Lar: t/c 14:14, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

not the admin only section :)

Non-admin here, I think I am out of the admin only section, but if not, feel free to move. With that out of the way....This needs to be closed. With or without sanction, there is simply no reason for this to be going 9(NINE) days after the original request. I have to say, you guys (people with the authority to hold people to the probation terms) have failed miserably here. Arkon (talk) 00:52, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Shocker. Hipocrite (talk) 01:28, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Look, I'm going to be blunt here, because I think you would appreciate that. I think you are an enabler to WMC's (and to a lesser extent Stephan Schultz's) antics in the last month or so. So yes, shocker. This probation is far from perfect, but the fact that it has turned into this, is all of our faults. Arkon (talk) 01:31, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I think that you are wrong. I think that you are merely assuming that because I'm also not an enabler for Lar's antics in the last month or so. I've offered to support broad topic bans on lots and lots of people five times, I think, in the last week (some via email). I'll do it again. Admins need to grow a spine and start doing something. Hipocrite (talk) 01:33, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough on the whole. Would like to note, however, that the only admin who I have had a problem with their actions (Jehochman) seems to have backed away from the area. Other than that, I hope I've enabled the antics of rest. (Ok, to be completely honest some of NW's stuff confuses me too, but that's not necessarily a bad thing) Arkon (talk) 01:46, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

My what a wonderful thread for ArbCom to consider while deliberating in the current case on this topic. And what a wonderful thread for anyone to consider while thinking about Misplaced Pages itself. Kindly review Misplaced Pages:General sanctions/Climate change probation/RFC. Proper comments in the proper places, please. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 02:02, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Arkon (talk) 02:38, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

(moved from above, was in response to "procedural but important point")

• I agree with C, but would note that Arbcomm don't seem to feel bound by this: they are quite happy for Arbs to provide evidence in cases they judge. As to this getting out of hand: yes it has; it has become quite ill-disciplined; clear trolling has been tolerated, although that isn't all the problem William M. Connolley (talk) 10:05, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

One outsider's view on WMC

I have no prior involvement in the climate change subject area, neither as an editor nor as a sysop. So my evaluation of William M. Connolley's editing in this topic area was undertaken from scratch. I post my 'findings', for want of a less domineering phrase, here to give some indication as to my thinking on the proposals to topic-ban WMC—in the hope that they will attract concise, focussed comments on the issues herein (which I consider to be the central concerns in this evaluation of William's conduct).

Much of William's editing takes place in the climate change topic area. He seems highly driven when editing any article in this topic; and whilst that can often lead to a closed mindset and a fiery approach, it can also help to cut through a lot of the POVy junk edits that contested subject areas seem to attract. When first evaluating WMC, I looked for evidence that his approach to article content in this subject area was flawed. I looked for signs that he held a non-neutral viewpoint on climate change or any sub-topic, and let these viewpoints permeate his edits; and for signs that he edit warred only with those who hold a specific viewpoint. I found nothing of the sort. William's approach to raw article content is not at fault here. Indeed, it's hard to describe how more valuable an editor with his editing philosophy is when compared with a POV-pushing psuedo-lobbyist (hyperbole and hypotheticals, of course; this is not to say that any of his peers in this topic are so).

The problem lies with how William works with others. 'Not well' seems to be the basic answer. He can be quite direct with those who edit in a way he finds questionable. Whilst, as I said earlier, that can be a good thing, at times it is borderline OWNy. William is quick to revert (a courtesy glance over his most recent contributions, filtered to show only mainspace edits, shows a lot of non-vandalism reversions). Recently he reverted another editor with the suggestion that his edit was counter to consensus even when such a consensus was not yet clearly formed (and indeed may yet form in favour of a conflicting position—cf Talk:Fred_Singer#Dean of...).

WMC makes comments that are pragmatic and genuine. But he is also blunt and direct. Too often does he bite, seem unapproachable, or appear to not desire compromise. I would encourage anybody who reads this comment to undertake their own evaluation of William, if they are not already familiar with his contributions to this topic; you will doubtless conclude in the same direction as I have.

My deduction is that William is presently acting, to employ that banal slice of Wikijargon, like a not-so-giant dick. I think he supports Misplaced Pages's mission too much to ever turn into a big enough dick for us to warrant banning him outright as an obvious troll, but that is not to say that until such a day his conduct would be sufferable. Topic areas like this need calm-headed participants; somebody as fiery as WMC cannot be categorised as such. And whilst he seems to be substantially influencing article content, there is no discernible improvement anywhere as a result of his presence. He is a net negative, I unfortunately must conclude. On that basis alone, I will support a ban from all pages relating to climate change, and recommend that it be of moderate length (two months being what I have in mind).

William is not the only editor whose presence on climate change articles is detrimental. I dearly hope that enforcement threads will be opened over the coming days on certain other editors. And I apologise for the (probably excessive) length of this comment; as above, my hope is that the opinion I have adopted will be perceived as more fair if I outline my thinking in full. (Yes, I wear the 'naîve and proud' badge with honour.) AGK 22:59, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

William M. Connolley (talk) 07:41, 23 May 2010 (UTC)]

• I'm a little concerned by your final paragraph. It gives the impression (presumably mistaken) that you've come here with the idea that there are specific problem editors who need to be fixed, and are waiting for a pretext to sanction those editors. The idea that an admin is circling this board "dearly hoping" for an enforcement thread against specific editors is a bit disturbing, at least to me.

  I'm not defending William, nor do I have an opinion on whether he should be topic-banned or not. I do think that if he (or other long-term contributors) are topic-banned, then there should be a mechanism to review the actual state of climate-change articles at specific time points after the topic ban. The climate-change articles have repeatedly been recognized by independent, reputable lay and scientific media (distinct from partisan op-eds) as being of exceptional quality. William (and other long-term contributors who have recently come under fire) played major roles in developing those articles, which reflect creditably on Misplaced Pages. It's possible that he's now become a "net negative"; certainly he's abrasive, to the point that a number of editors limit their Misplaced Pages contributions almost entirely to complaints about him. On the other hand, I sometimes worry that this site's obsession with personality politics over content is its Achilles heel. MastCell  04:08, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

MastCell, if you didn't notice by now... there are problem editors who need to be fixed, and nobody needs to wait for any pretext because they are repeat defendants in the probation process. Having said that your bad faith interpretation of AGKs intentions in the matter do not match up with how I interpreted his words, and if you lose the bad faith you might see his words are more ambiguous than you are suggesting.

I have to disagree with your second point also. For a start I haven't heard all that much praise for Wiki CC articles. I remember one of the 'climategate' emails contained an exchange between scientists, with one suggesting that another group of scientists were dumb enough to take their information from Wiki. It wasn't intended as praise. Secondly Wiki is about verifiability, and that means it doesn't hang on one person.

You seem to be suggesting that without WMC that Wiki would portray a false picture of CC, to the point of needing regular review, but I think that is untrue, I think it is a view that goes against the spirit of the community, and I think it misunderstands part of the community aspect of this site.

Your views point to ideas of article ownership - you seem to forget that the same volunteer editors who add to and improve articles are the ones who would have to undertake any review. And you seem to have forgotten that long-term contributors have been sanctioned in the past, and the reality is there are always more to take their place. There is no intellectual vacuum left by removing any one editor, and if that could even be the case then the editor in question would have to have a massive COI.

And finally, you seem to be yet another of the editors willing to encourage an uncivil environment here, and I wish you wouldn't. This is a 💕, edited by volunteers, which is built incrementally. For that it needs civility between participants, whether you like it or not, and sometimes people with civility problems need sanctioned, even if they know what they are taking about on CC articles. The encyclopedia is bigger than a couple of global warming articles, a lot bigger, so there is room for problem editors to edit something else, and no need to tolerate people who have shown a repeated inability to be civil. Weakopedia (talk) 06:02, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Please don't use "Wiki" if you mean "Misplaced Pages"--SPhilbrickT 16:58, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Um, could you point to that policy, guideline or essay - or is it simply that you are easily confused and need extra guidance in what is being referred to? LessHeard vanU (talk) 18:18, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I am sorry for any confusion, I am foreign. I'll mail Sphil a translation of my post. Weakopedia (talk) 18:24, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

@Weakopedia: If you're interested in outside reviews and commentary on Misplaced Pages's climate-change articles, I'd suggest starting with the sources listed here, or with this recent study.

As to civility, I promote it the best way I know how - by modeling the sort of civility that I'd like to see from others. Frankly, I'd like to see more of the admins active here (and elsewhere on the project) adapt this approach, because it seems rather lacking at present. I don't think you can judge an admin's commitment to civility by the number of civility sanctions they hand out. Long experience here tells me that such sanctions do nothing to improve civility (if anything, the reverse). If you want to know whether someone is committed to civility as a concept (as opposed to as a weapon of opportunity), then it's best to look at their own comportment, rather than at the number of times they call for civility sanctions against others. MastCell  19:10, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

MastCell, is there a problem with WMC's behavior and approach to editing, or not? ++Lar: t/c 17:08, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

That's an obviously leading and substantially irrelevant question. Point out any active editor where there is no problem with his or her editing. There are no significant and recent problems with William's editing - certainly less than some other long-standing editors I can point out. Sanctioning him now for ancient stuff when he actually has improved (along with evolving Misplaced Pages standards) is petty, anti-productive, and plain wrong. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:25, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Two points. 1) I was asking MastCell. 2) You are entitled to your opinion of the relevance. I on the other hand consider it highly relevant. I also consider it relevant how often some others seem to pop up and answer (or raise irrelevancies) on behalf of others when the question admits of a simple yes/no. I note I've asked WMC a variant of this question and what I got was ... no answer from him but a lot of back and forth from others. As a defense tactic it's admirable (speaking purely tactically). As a discussion style? Not so much. ++Lar: t/c 19:12, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Simple yes/no questions only apply to simple situations. This isn't. And yes, I do comment on all kinds of discussions when I think it helps to maintain or improve the quality of Misplaced Pages. Good quality of the coverage of topics I'm interested in is the reason I'm here. That's how Misplaced Pages works. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:18, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

That's certainly one possible explanation for why you comment, yes. ++Lar: t/c 03:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

And, assuming good faith, that's undoubtedly why both of you are commenting, as we all are. Lar, your words give the unfortunate impression that you're hinting about other possibilities, not really very civil. . . dave souza, talk 21:05, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

If you want good faith to BE assumed, you have to assume it yourself. You can start by stopping with the insinuation, "Hmm. . ." ? What I was driving at is that when WMC asks questions and doesn't get answers, he blusters about it, but when other folk ask him questions, a bunch of people pop up and interject various things. It's like they're running interference for him. Pattern or coincidence? Dunno. ++Lar: t/c 21:20, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Well now, having had a look to check, WP:AGF seems to be a fundamental principle here, not a bargaining counter. What you seem to be driving at is that you keep seeing patterns, and frankly that behaviour looks rather paranoid though I'm sure you're doing it with the best of intentions. People notice a leading question, they're apt to point it out. IF WMC does that, I'd expect it to be pointed out at the time and not bottled up as some sort of pattern disclosing a massive conspiracy. As Brian said, we're all individuals :-) Assuming otherwise only contributes to the negative atmosphere surrounding climate-change articles, to borrow a phrase. . . dave souza, talk 21:50, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Nice distortion there. You miss my meaning. Assuming good faith is vital. But when you don't assume it of others, don't be disappointed when they don't assume it of you. While I have your ear, why is it so hard to get WMC to answer direct questions on the first go? Or ever? Why do his allies run interference for him so much. ++Lar: t/c 21:57, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

The short answer, in my opinion, is yes. I think William is a contributor to the negative atmosphere surrounding climate-change articles, although I'd stop short of the Emmanuel Goldstein-like obsession with him that seems evident both on- and off-wiki. But that's not really here nor there, since I'm OK with whatever the consensus approach is to deal with William. I simply think that a) these articles have reflected creditably on Misplaced Pages, so b) if long-term contributors are topic-banned, then it makes sense to evaluate how those bans affect the article quality. After all, this site's goal is to produce a serious, respectable reference work.

In any case, my major concern was a trend toward admins here cloaking their own judgments in the guise of neutrally evaluating a request for enforcement. If AGK, or any other admin, has concluded that an editor deserves to be sanctioned, then they should step up and apply the sanction in their own name and put it up for review. That's what admins do. They should not sit back, assert their neutrality, await a suitably pliable enforcement request, and then opine with gravity that the request "has merit". That makes a mockery of this process, and of the role of admins in it. I may well have misinterpreted AGK's words, and I don't mean to pick on him; I think this is a recurring concern that has been raised about this probation in general. MastCell  19:29, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, MastCell, for answering my question. Hopefully it wasn't too strenuous an endeavor. ++Lar: t/c 03:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

In many ways the articles have not reflected creditably on Misplaced Pages, they've discredited the encyclopedia in some of the past treatment of Fred Singer, in the current treatment of The American Enterprise Institute at Climate change denial (no defense of AEI in the article, despite the problem being pointed out to editors in control over there), and Frederick Seitz (see paragraph 2 here which stood that way for years (including as a BLP vio in Seitz' lifetime) until I fixed it by simply using the same source that the negative information came from). If long-term contributors, some of whom are responsible for the biased treatment this encyclopedia gives to subjects, are topic-banned, then it makes sense to evaluate how those bans affect the article quality. After all, this site's goal is to produce a serious, respectable reference work. That goal tends not to be met on the more controversial topics, when large numbers of editors, quite a few of them long-term contributors, rabidly engage in disputes. A few long topic bans at first, and probably eventually a few more for limited durations, would still leave plenty of responsible editors, and the ones remaining would probably be even more responsible than otherwise. Giving certain editors with the house POV a deep discount rate on sanctions for clear, continual behavioral violations -- especially violations that have nothing directly to do with science, but rather the politics of science controversies -- just encourages a bad atmosphere. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 20:53, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

MastCell, I have not sanctioned William yet because I remain undecided. And I have not been "sitting back"; in fact until three days ago I had no involvement in this discussion board at all. Moreover, it will prove difficult for me to sanction William because there is no provision to do so; ArbCom haven't authorised discretionary sanctions, and so any topic ban would require community agreement. I guess to get the ball rolling I could dust off my drama banners and announce to much fanfare that WMC is hereby banned from this topic area upon pain of death, but I prefer my head to be atop my shoulders and not on a metaphorical pike. I don't want William to be impeccably civil and play the 'one revert per article per week' game. I want him to not be so set in his ways and to be a little more flexible and open to compromise. Misplaced Pages is a collaborative exercise; he needs to start treating it as such. AGK 21:48, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

The community has authorized discretionary sanctions in the area though. From WP:GS/CC: "Any editor may be sanctioned by an uninvolved administrator for disruptive edits, including, but not limited to, edit warring, personal attacks, incivility and assumptions of bad faith. Sanctions imposed may include restrictions on reverts or other specified behaviors, bans from editing the climate change pages and/or closely related topics, blocks of up to 1 year in length, or any other measures the imposing administrator believes are reasonably necessary to ensure the smooth functioning of the project." Not saying that I would agree, but administrators do have that authority. NW (Talk) 22:05, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

LHvU's comments above would suggest that such is not the case, hence my point that no discretionary sanctions have been authorised. There seems to be a lot of confusion on this note. AGK 22:24, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

NW: The community has authorized them, yes. However it's blazingly clear that one admin applying sanctions to WMC without first gaining consensus for them will result in them being undone again in short order, after we first endure a parade of other folk trooping in and piling on, raising every procedural objection imaginableand quibbling at every diff, while for the most part striving assiduously to avoid answering direct questions or admitting that there is any problem whatever, with their own behavior, with WMC's behavior, ad nauseum, So we have this instead. If this works, great. If not, it's ArbCom, sooner or later. ++Lar: t/c 03:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

JohnWBarber, you comment on the American Enterprise Institute coverage, from the archives at http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Climate_change_denial/Archive_26#AEI there seems to have been a discussion where proposed sources were disputed, but WMC was not part of that discussion so this seems entirely offtopic. If you have better sources, try raising it again on the article talk page. If you're accusing the editors concerned of having committed "clear, continual behavioral violations" then you have to make the case, with diffs. Otherwise this just seems to be a general slur about other editors, with no indication that WMC has been in any way involved. . . . dave souza, talk 21:53, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Dave: so this seems entirely offtopic --no, tangential. I was addressing MastCell's general principles and providing examples that show where those general principals are wanting. I'm not calling on anyone to be sanctioned, for NPOV violations, and in the case of Seitz, it's all history. MastCell's view seems to be held by a number of editors and it seemed like a good idea to point out what I see as its serious flaws. I'm sure the discussion won't get off track. If it does, the comments can be moved. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 23:17, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

So, tangentially, a dispute you've been having about exactly how much weight to give to various sources on an article invalidates MastCell's more general point that climate-change articles have repeatedly been recognized by independent, reputable lay and scientific media (distinct from partisan op-eds) as being of exceptional quality? Not the way I see it, evidently the reputable media didn't get around to examining the particular detail you were discussing. Articles can always do with improvement, some more than others, and removing editors with expertise in the field isn't a good way to get worthwhile improvements. As WMC wasn't involved there he can't be held responsible for you failing to get your way. Always worthwhile finding more sources and reopening discussions. . dave souza, talk 21:05, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

A good balance?

I think there is good reason to stop WMC only from editing BLPs. Some are very quick to dismiss off-site complaints as partisan carping, but I think the diffs in these requests show that WMC has not adequately responded to the scrutiny. Abdicating all responsibility for the criticism does not work in WMC's case, because his edits have at times clearly shown an effort to harm reputations in a way that is not consistent with Misplaced Pages policy (some were before the probation, but the recent edits to Singer show the same). The fact that he does this while, as I understand, criticizing the same people on his blog, also suggests that he should be held to a much higher standard, which he is not meeting. In that context I think it is irresponsible to let him continue editing BLPs, regardless of anything else, and I think any person involved in this topic whose article was being negatively influenced by WMC would rightfully be upset. I think a good balance is just to prohibit editing on BLPs. Mackan79 (talk) 22:21, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Eh, the recent edits to Singer's bio don't show the same. They show a reasonable and reasoned response to SlimVirgin introducing inaccuracies into a bio, raising questions which should reasonably be resolved on the article talk page. SlimVirgin's problematic changes are being resolved by other editors, her improvements will hopefully contribute to a better bio. As always, civility is required all round. . . dave souza, talk 22:43, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. We have the dif where WMC introduces Singer as a climate skeptic before saying anything else about him. Looking now, I see he then proceeded to make it the second thing we say about him, in between his qualifications, whereas a compromise now seems to have been reached where it is the third part of the first sentence. The very result indicates exactly the harm in trying to compromise on a BLP with someone taking WMC's strongly negative approach. Read the bio of Michael E. Mann, on which WMC has also worked for a long period of time. The first sentence: "Michael E. Mann (born 28 December 1965) is an American climatologist, and author of more than 80 peer-reviewed journal publications." Read then WMC's comments on that talk page, such as here, where he says that the bio should not focus on controversy since that would be "shallow." It is a simple game: controversialize foes as much as possible, and remove controversy from friends as far as possible. We are now defining Singer as a climate change skeptic. Is that his definition? I don't believe it shows the basic level of respect that's needed on BLPs. Mackan79 (talk) 02:56, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

That Singer is a "skeptic" is overwhelmingly supported by reliable sources (for a tiny sample, see ). Moreover Singer describes himself as a skeptic, even a "prominent skeptic." Apparently WMC's sin is to use a term that is attested in multiple reliable sources and which the subject applies to himself, because some Wikipedians don't like it. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:14, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I took that as given. Nevertheless, you don't define someone in terms of a controversial position unless you're trying to delegitimize the person for holding that position. You must know this. Who would want to be defined by any position they hold, as if that is simply what they are, rather than a view they came to as a longstanding professor at highly respected institutions? Currently the bio makes this part of his defining sentence, and then adds it again in the very next sentence about what he is known for (yes I know "environmental skeptic" is a different iteration, though probably a BLP violation in itself). I have seen when the shoe is on the other foot, as in Michael E. Mann, and that these sensitivities are present. Mackan79 (talk) 03:48, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

You define a person in terms of the things for which they are notable. Singer is notable as an activist. Yes, he has a distinguished career in government. Yes, he was a successful academic. But how many satellite designers from the 50s and 60s get regular press coverage these days? Guettarda (talk) 04:15, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec)Note for example Scheuering's work (cited in the Singer article, added by SV not WMC), which includes a chapter on Singer among "shapers of the great debate over conservation" because he is a "skeptic"; note Michigan State University professor (of sociology) Aaron McCright in his chapter Dealing with climate change contrarians who calls Singer "one of five best known American contrarians". Historian of physics (and former physicist) Spencer Weart calls Singer "the most prominent of these" when he speaks of the "skeptics". Three books, two by major academic presses, define Singer as a skeptic/contrarian. And that's what I managed to find sitting on the desk next to me.

This is, I believe, a fundamental part of the problem here - faulting WMC for making "harsh" edits when harsh edits are what NPOV requires of us. If there is a problem here it is that this is a conversation between the middle and one extreme. Entirely absent from the discussion is what some would call the "alarmist" POV which is quite notable and per NPOV really should be given due weight. But that's an entirely separate discussion. Guettarda (talk) 04:08, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

There are different contexts. For a neutral biography to define someone in terms of a view they hold is not the same as another source characterizing them in terms of that view. In the first sentence of a Misplaced Pages bio the implication is that we are summarizing his significance and output. To do this in terms of one controversial view is derogatory, and would not be done by an impartial writer. Mackan79 (talk) 04:36, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Ahh, I think I see the problem here. We aren't talking about views, we're talking about someone who is notable for their activism. His "output" is recent decades has been to advocate for a position, to lobby against proposed actions, and to write books and found organisations to further those aims. And we aren't talking about the normal usage of the word "skeptic". We're talking about "branding". Guettarda (talk) 06:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

A simple fact is that Singer himself defines himself as a "global warming sceptic". "SEPP - Science & Environmental Policy Project - Founded by atmospheric physicist and global-warming skeptic S. Fred Singer" (emphasis mine) is how SEPP advertises itself. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:42, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

But (1) that is in the context of a blurb about that GW-related organization, so it's relevant to present that aspect prominently in that context, and (2) he still lists atmospheric physicist first. I absolutely agree with Mackan above that there is a tendency to accentuate certain details while suppressing others -- and it gives the impression of spin. In my observation, it's something like this: if the LP is an outspoken skeptic, suppress respectable information, emphasize sketchy associations (i.e. any link to Exxon, no matter how tenuous), accentuate cases where they've been wrong (often supported by criticism from blogs sources), and include non-notable trivia that would tend to embarrass the subject. Taken individually, each edit looks minor, but when you look at the big picture, it's a POV problem. This is especially true when (as Mackan said) scientists on the other side of the debate are treated completely differently. I should note, it's not just WMC. ATren (talk) 11:54, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I think you are losing context here. This is the edit. It does not remove the atmospheric physicist part, it just adds the sceptic. Admittedly it adds it first, but that's very arguably in order of prominence is reliable source. I see nothing worthy of even criticism in this edit. And of course there is a difference between Singer, who, voluntarily and proudly, founded and heads a sceptical advocacy organization, and Mann, who is viciously and personally attacked for the inconvenient results of his science (which, as all science is a work in progress, are not perfect, but have been supported by a large number of reliable sources). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:18, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

You may want to read ATren's comment again, more carefully. You've lost sight of the forest by focusing on one tree. ++Lar: t/c 14:44, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, so far all of the trees that have been inspected in some detail have turned out to be none. So far, I see mostly steppe. Fact is that the original complaint is based on only two recent edits, none of which are problematic. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:52, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

That is exactly the problem. Two diffs of no real importance brought up by SV who has a content dispute with WMC and then sling the mud until something sticks. This is quite the most abhorent way to conduct enforcement I could imagine. And yet I am accused of not helping matters when I try to point this out, indeed my comments were moved by Lar himself when I said this. Wikilawyer certificates all round please. Polargeo (talk) 15:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Something else is wrong, if it takes this much time to settle a dispute between SV and WMC. Clearly, the amount of time spent on WMC cases is a real disruption. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 16:07, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Which is obviously my fault, rather than, say, waste of time interjections by kibitzers William M. Connolley (talk) 16:52, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

WMC, is there a problem with your behavior and approach to editing, or not? ++Lar: t/c 17:54, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Lar, would you describe the way you last interacted with MastCell on this page as uncivil or not? Mathsci (talk) 20:46, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Why is it whenever I ask WMC this question or a variant, someone else turns up with a distraction of some sort? I think we're going on what, 4 times now? Let's see though, I asked MastCell a direct question, MastCell answered it, and I thanked him. (with a side comment directed at the distractors). So, while there may have been room for improvement (we are none of us perfect, after all) I thought it went pretty well. So then, do you think now WMC could answer? Or was there another distraction you guys wanted to try first? ++Lar: t/c 21:32, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Your trolling is becoming a bit blatant. You may need to back off a bit and troll more subtly William M. Connolley (talk) 22:02, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

@ATren - all we can do is represent sources fairly. Reliable sources discuss Singer in this context. It would be spin to fail to represent sources fairly because we don't like what they say, or because we don't feel that they are fair. And, the truth is, we aren't representing POVs fairly - the "alarmist" POV is almost entirely absent. As for the ties to Exxon, CEI, and the like - again, these are, per sources, underrepresented. This has been documented and discussed in the peer reviewed literature - for example, McCright & Dunlap (2003) Social Problems 50(3):348-373. Guettarda (talk) 15:38, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Guettarda, I watched several editors edit war to keep an out-of-context embarrassing-in-retrospect factoid from 1960, an insignificant fact that was so obscure that there was only a single mention of it in a RS (the original story in Astronautics magazine). And even when some of us tried to move it out of the lede, we were reverted and admonished for burying embarrassing stuff. As for the Exxon associations, the situation is better now than it used to be, but there was a time when the partisan website exxonsecrets was used as a source in pretty much every skeptic BLP I encountered. Then there are the blog sources used in BLPs (RealClimate, timlambert, desmogblog, etc) -- editors who removed them were immediately reverted, usually with an accusation of POV pushing or "whitewashing". None of this is within policy. Now in this particular case, Singer is a self-identified skeptic, but that's not all he is, yet there seems to be a desire to minimize everything else and accentuate his role as a skeptic. That in itself is not too problematic, but in the context of the several years of BLP conflicts on this article, conflicts in which policies were not adhered to, these otherwise minor issues become more significant. ATren (talk) 02:11, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't see it now, but the site I saw that described Singer in that way, supposedly in his own words, was on a page listing climate change skeptics as such. So on that page it states that Singer is a climate change skeptic. That hardly means he considers it a summary of his career and what he represents. I do also notice that nobody links to the quote, at least not here or where I originally saw WMC make that defense of his edits. I believe WMC calls this his "tag line," but based on the context it seems to be a misrepresentation. Mackan79 (talk) 18:41, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

And Scheuering, McCright and Weart...? Guettarda (talk) 22:16, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I think you're clearly mistaken to use certain critical statements (or other statements taken out of context) for constructing the basic framework of a BLP. However, this discussion is about WMC, who more than once attempted to slant the first sentence of this bio in much more of such a critical direction. Taken with his combative style, unwillingness to compromise, his apparent criticism of these subjects under his name off site, and the criticism Misplaced Pages has received in turn, I think it makes him inappropriate for editing these bios. Even the combative style at all on a BLP would, in my view, simply be inappropriate. Considering that he seems to be much better suited for the non-biographical articles, where most of these issues are not present, that suggests to me a reasonable balance which, frankly, I think he should see the need to adopt himself. Mackan79 (talk) 23:52, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Edit review

• Kim D. Petersen asked several days ago whether there were any edits by WMC that violated policy. At the risk of repeating myself:
  • This edit by WMC (31 December 2009) added a self-published source (link is to the most recent archive.org version, the page is no longer online) to Singer's BLP, in direct contravention of WP:BLPSPS ("Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, or tweets—as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject"), a policy which WMC is well aware of.
  • This edit (2 November 2009) reinserts a ref to a site WMC is personally involved in, to contradict an opinion voiced by the article subject. None of the articles presented at the cited site actually discuss Singer, so this appears to be a case of using this BLP as a coatrack for conducting a scientific argument (as well as WP:SYN), rather than a reflection of Singer's reception. WP:SYN is part of WP:OR policy.
  • This (15 October 2009) is unsourced WP:OR commentary.
  • This edit (15 May 2010) changes the description of Singer's SEPP institute from "a non-profit research institute, where he serves as president" to the dismissive "a website skeptical of global warming, which he runs", a change that is unsourced and is in fact out of step with reliable sources.
  • This edit (15 May 2010) as well as this (16 May 2010) diminished the subject, who continues to be described as an atmospheric physicist in the press. In the BLPN discussion related to this last point, ten editors (MastCell, Will_Beback, Cla68, Crum375, Bill the Cat 7, FormerIPOnlyEditor, SlimVirgin, Off2riorob, mark nutley, JohnWBarber) advocated (or agreed with) dropping the "retired" label, yet WMC showed himself unable to accept input by uninvolved editors, dismissing the entire thread as "forum shopping" (08:38, 20 May 2010 in that discussion). The noticeboards are designed to facilitate wider community input. I am not going to spend my days reiterating these points here over and over again, but if you can't see that there is an ongoing problem here, I can't help you. --JN466 23:06, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Most of these diffs pre-date the probation period, so they're not really germane. As for the last one - pointing out that someone is retired isn't "diminishing" them. See, for example, Colin Powell: an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. "Retired" is not an insult. Guettarda (talk) 05:21, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Was it worth it? :) Heyitspeter (talk) 08:15, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Not sure if I should insert a comment into this discussion or not; please revert if inappropriate. I remember seeing that "retired" bit, and in the context it certainly was used to diminish Singer's standing. The controversy centers not only on his past opinions and actions but his ongoing ones. I clearly understood it to mean, "This old fogey who is out of the loop is still spouting banalities." Not saying if that's accurate or not, but that was the impression given, and I can't believe it wasn't deliberate. While I'm commenting, it's generally perceived that WMC is disruptive. I've concluded the only reason he hasn't been sanctioned is because so many heavyweights agree with his opinions. Imho he does not represent the best or even the acceptable of Misplaced Pages and should not be allowed to continue his typical behavior. Of course I would welcome him as an editor if he modified his behavior. Yopienso (talk) 11:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

It is fairly clear to me that several "heavyweights" also detest WMC which is why we end up with people trying to bring up sanctions based on his long past edits and his calling a spade a spade in the lede when it is already in the article (sourced) and is obviously the most notable aspect of the individual in question (oh and the new BLP crime of adding a POV tag!). Polargeo (talk) 11:19, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Assumes facts not in evidence. Who do you think "detests WMC" (rather than dislikes his approach to participating here)? Please provide cites for this assertion. ++Lar: t/c 21:24, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

That SEPP is a a non-profit research institute is obviously wrong, which is why the article no longer says it. Asserting that Singer "serves as President" is also clearly silly: SEPP is a one-man band, as I said . As usual, trying to edit (or comment on) an article without knowing anything about it isn't helpful. Etc. William M. Connolley (talk) 08:16, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

WMC, do you think it's NPOV to describe SEPP simply as a "website," as you did here? Our article suggests a broader scope. Mackan79 (talk) 08:36, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I think that change make the article considerably more accurate than it was before. Arguing that SEPP is a research organisation is completely implausible (but I notice you are not asking the edit that added that why she did). Arguing that it is *just* a website is possible, though I agree not entirely accurate: getting the details correct would be a matter for talk page discussion. It is not substantially inaccurate William M. Connolley (talk) 09:55, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and if you want some measure of how reliable SEPP or its website are: (at least) 6 of the 9 people listed as "science advisors" are dead William M. Connolley (talk) 09:56, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

This is just another illustration of the problem. What you are saying is, essentially, "I know better. Editors who reflect what reliable sources write are wrong, because the sources are wrong. I can change the article text according to my personal knowledge and belief, and leave the sources saying something else in place as references." These are usually considered beginners' errors. If matters are as you say, the onus is on you to find sources that say so, and cite them. WP:BLP, WP:OR and WP:V are policy, but you clearly think they don't apply to you. --JN466 11:37, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

It is indeed an illustration of the problem: you need editors who have a clue. The "research organisation" bit wasn't sourced from a RS: it was a straight copy of SEPP's own puffery. When are you going to admit that the previous text was wrong, that everyone now knows that the previous text was wrong, and that correcting it was good? Why are you attacking the person who corrected the error, rather than the person who inserted the error? Are you perhaps ever so slightly partial in all this? William M. Connolley (talk) 11:53, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

No, I am not. I tend to think Singer is either a crackpot or venal. But this is a pointy edit, the sources referring to SEPP as an "institute" include mainstream newspapers, and you can't make up for the lack of sources that say what you want them to say with bullying. --JN466 12:02, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I see you've only answered one of the questions. Let me repeat the two you evaded: When are you going to admit that the previous text was wrong, that everyone now knows that the previous text was wrong, and that correcting it was good? Why are you attacking the person who corrected the error, rather than the person who inserted the error? William M. Connolley (talk) 12:08, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

The previous text was good, because it was verifiable. Yours was bad because it was unsourced and misrepresented the source you left in place as a reference. If you want to get the text "right", find sources that agree with you. If you can't find any, shrug and move on, instead of browbeating editors that edit according to policy. --JN466 12:37, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

This does indeed appear to rather summarise the problem. In reality, the previous text was bad, because it was wrong. We should'nt repeat errors in RS's just because they are in RS's. This is a common misapprehension, but it is indeed wrong. If you want to introduce deliberate errors into wiki, then I suppose I shuold be grateful that you don't actually edit any Cl Ch pages William M. Connolley (talk) 12:48, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I think you're being a little silly here. You should spend your time looking for sources, rather than arguing from personal conviction. And if sources that meet WP:RS call SEPP a "think tank", "organization" or "policy institute", and you can't find one that calls it a "one-man band" or "a website", then that's just the way the cookie crumbles. There are quite a few "institutes" who are one-man bands, and they still get called institutes. There's also quite a few such institutes who do a bad job updating their websites. --JN466 12:55, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I cannot find any mention of SEPP in mainstream media ( unless you count 'Stafford County Sun', 'Napa Valley Register' or 'Power Line (blog)'). It seems it is not even that notable. --Nigelj (talk) 12:27, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Here are mainstream press mentions of it: . They include the St. Petersburg Times, New York Times, Nature and others. --JN466 12:37, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

<ec> Seem to be mostly pay-per-view articles from the '90s, as the LAT apparently put it back then, "said S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, an organization of mostly retired academics..." Perhaps a bit more clarity about the sources is needed. However, it could be a serious BLP violation to accuse people of being dead, and can we trust the Murdoch press for something so important when discussing the current chair of SEPP's board of directors? Perhaps it's just that they're a bit slow in updating the website, after all it's less than a decade since William Nierenberg died.
Update – thanks for the NYT link! That shows that in 1997 the "project" ran a website, nothing more as far as I've seen. . . dave souza, talk 13:01, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I was looking for current coverage. I see you have to go back into the archives to find the heyday of the site. --Nigelj (talk) 17:20, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

WMC, SEPP calls itself a "project," with a board of directors and apparently nine "science advisors." We also state it was founded in 1990, which I believe is before it could have had a website. It seems to have been responsible for a widely controversial Leipzig Declaration in 1995, based on a conference it held at that time. Do you really think it's arguable that we should introduce SEPP as a "website"? It strikes me that you continue to write what is basically snark, as it appears you have been doing for several years when I look back in the history and see edits like this. You seem to think that the organization is basically fraudulent, and since you know this personally, that the articles should reflect the same. The odd thing is it's completely unclear whether you even consider that this would be a problem. Mackan79 (talk) 23:58, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

exit strategy

Do we have an exit strategy for the current unstructured discussions happening on this page? How will we know when they are done and normal process can be resumed? Are there any outstanding decisions needing to be taken at this point, and if so what are they? If not, is there any reason everything on this page from "William M. Connolley (revisited)" down shouldn't be collapsed or moved to talk? I note that we are currently discussing a content issue which might be related to an enforcement request, but in no way forms part of a current enforcement request. Thparkth (talk) 18:47, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Thparkth: I think we were waiting for AGK (a bit) at his request. But I agree we're close to closable if not actually. I think one of our more recent participants (rather than LHvU or TWS or I) maybe ought to do it, going with the consensus we are at, once we wait a bit more for AGK. I suppose one of us could nudge him. Also I agree about trying to return to more normal form by moving much of this to talk and collapsing things. ++Lar: t/c 19:29, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

No problem with tidying, but of course where allegations have been made the detailed responses arising from discussion of these allegations must remain threaded with them. So, the point would be to keep threads intact and where applicable move whole discussions to talk, should be doable. . . dave souza, talk 20:52, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I think a decision has been made and is just awaiting an admin to take action. Could I make another suggestion here? Would one of the admins notify Singer himself, since he has apparently complained about it in the past, that Misplaced Pages has taken action to protect his BLP from harm by temporarily banning one of the editors responsible? I think Dr. Singer would really appreciate that. Cla68 (talk) 19:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

If anyone does this, I will immediatly seek to have them stripped of their tools and banned forever for eggregious BLP violations. Cla68 - remember when you almost got banned for threatening to go to newspapers about someone you didn't like? You're doing it again. Only warning. Hipocrite (talk) 19:12, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I think you need to stop "warning" people, Hipocrite. You've been doing it a lot and it's not entirely helpful. SlimVirgin 19:17, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

You know what's not entiurly helpful? People threatening to loose wikipedia internal conflicts out on identifiable living persons. Of course, you've taken sides here, so let me ask you - you've been sanctioned before, right? How would you like it if we sent personalized notices of those sanctions to people who have actually gone out of their way to make your real life more difficult? Thats what's being proposed here. That we send a personalized notice saying "Hey, we banned WMC from your bio!" to a guy who makes his living trying to score points off of WMC. The parallels are astonishing. Hipocrite (talk) 19:21, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

My point was that your tendency to issue aggressive "warnings" doesn't help to calm things down. It just sets people against each other. SlimVirgin 19:27, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. What do you think about others threatening to take wikipedia disputes out into the real world? Hipocrite (talk) 19:48, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with SlimVirgin. YOU need to stop threatening people, Hipocrite. Now. I happen to think that sending Singer any notice at all would be a very bad idea... crass, hurtful to others, and (worst?) it might be false, this whole thing might be undone again day after tomorrow, apparently. No, an admin ought not to take it on as a task. But if someone observing from afar chooses to do so there isn't much we can do to stop them. So stop blustering please. This whole thing has enough drama as it is. ++Lar: t/c 19:29, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

So, to summarize, it's a bad idea, but someone might do it, so don't make it expressly clear how bad of an idea it is because...? Hipocrite (talk) 19:48, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

No. Rather: So, to summarize, it's a bad idea and try asking nicely that we not do it, instead of hyperbolically threatening. Someone the other day said to me "You know that Hipocrite? He's a drama accelerant". Don't be that sort of person. Please. ++Lar: t/c 20:15, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Lar, you've been asked this over and over and over - stop calling people names. Just stop. Don't call people names. Who is discussing me off-wiki with you, exactly? Hipocrite (talk) 20:32, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

No one is calling you any names. Your behavior was being described. You seem to pop up somewhere... et voila, drama increases. Don't be that way. Don't bluster. Don't accuse. Don't insinuate. Don't threaten. ++Lar: t/c 21:12, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Lar, who are you discussing me offwiki with, exactly? Hipocrite (talk) 21:24, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Stick to the point instead of getting distracted. Don't bluster, don't threaten, don't accuse, don't insinuate. Just be a nice person. I'm done. ++Lar: t/c 22:00, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I was just about to add SV is right Hipocrite, points can be made without the fierceness and Cla68 is a reasonable and responsive listener. Meanwhile can someone move most of this stuff to the Singer page or collapse it? --BozMo talk 19:31, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Assumes facts not in evidence. Hipocrite (talk) 19:48, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Lar, "But if someone observing from afar chooses to do so there isn't much we can do to stop them." sounds awfully like the sort of thing Cla68 posted a link reminding us about, of the time when he dropped heavy hints on WR about possible outing of editors, though in fairness didn't threaten to do it himself. So, once again heavy hints of ugly scenes arising from that website. Hmm. . . dave souza, talk 20:47, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

NO. Don't even go there. Cla68 was smeared unjustly that time. Don't try it again. This has nothing to do with WR. Your insinuations are unacceptable. ++Lar: t/c 21:12, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Lar, you need to stop reflexively defending your claque. Cla68 has stated that he was not smeared unjustly that time. He apologized for "not choosing my words more carefully." Hipocrite (talk) 21:24, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Apologizing for a minor misstatement is not incompatible with having been unjustly smeared. And 10 style points for using "claque", even if it doesn't fit. ++Lar: t/c 22:00, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

<ec> @ Lar - Glad to hear it's nothing to do with WR, I don't go there. So, while there may not be much we can do to stop the word being spread about any sanctions imposed on an editor, we shouldn't be encouraging that for the good reasons Hip suggested. Hopefully all reasonable and responsive listeners will accept that, and pass over any overheated statements. Thanks, dave souza, talk 21:29, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

The point I was making behind my suggestion is that we need to remember that there are REAL people who are affected directly by Misplaced Pages BLPs. That is why we need to take especial care to enforce the BLP policies. Fighting over the name of the Climategate article is one thing, but keeping editors from abusing BLPs is something far more serious. Cla68 (talk) 23:12, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

• I am happy for an administrator to close this complaint and action it one way or another; and I would rather that this be done sooner, not later. AGK 22:23, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
  • As I said, I'd rather some other admin did it, but if no other admin has done within the next 4 hours, I shall, as I strongly agree it is way past time. The consensus outcome is clear, I think. (Article/talkpage ban from Fred Singer for 3 months for WMC) ++Lar: t/c 22:43, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
    • 4 hours having elapsed and no other admin taking action, I have. Consensus ban enacted. 03:01, 26 May 2010 (UTC)